"I must be wary," Gabrielle said, "that they tell no tales to--to others." Flora shrugged her pretty shoulders. "Lovers are droll. A maid may love a man, and a man may love a maid, and neither know that the other is sick of the same pip, poor fowls." "What do you mean, witch?" Gabrielle questioned. Flora twirled a pirouette before she replied: "Nothing--less than nothing. I dance here by-and-by to please a grandee. Will you peep through your lattice?" "Perhaps," Gabrielle answered, cautiously. Then she gave a little start. "Some one is coming," she said, and, indeed, some one was coming. A man had just mounted the bridge from the Neuilly road and stood there for an instant surveying the two girls. He was a modish young gentleman, very splendidly attired, who carried himself with a dainty insolence, and he now came slowly towards the girls with an amiable salutation. "Exquisite ladies," he said, "I give you good-day." At the sound of his voice and the sight of his figure Gabrielle had disappeared into the Inn as quickly as ever rabbit disappeared into its hole. Flora had no less nimbly run down to the caravan; but when she reached it she paused on the first step, attracted by the appearance of the handsomely dressed young gentleman, who appealed to her earnestly: "Why do you scatter so rashly? I should be delighted to talk with you." Flora mocked him: "Perhaps we do not want to talk to you." The new-comer would not admit the possibility. "Impossible," he protested. "Let me present myself. I am the Marquis de Chavernay. I am very diverting. I can make love to more ladies at the same time than any gentleman of my age at court." Flora laughed. "Amiable accomplishment," she said, mockingly; but while she mocked her quick eyes were carefully noting every particular of the stranger's appearance, from the exquisite laces at his throat and wrists to the jewels on his fingers, and finding all very much to her taste, and the appropriate adornments for a young gentleman of so gallant a carriage and so pleasantly impertinent a face. She had never cast her eyes upon any youth in Madrid that had captivated her fancy so mightily, and she thought to herself that when the time came for her to have a lover here was the very lover she would choose. And then she remembered, with a fluttering heart, that she was likely to become a great lady and the peer of this fascinating dandiprat. As for him, he returned her gaze with a bold stare of approval. The Marquis de Chavernay agitated his dainty hands in delicate assurance. "Agreeable, believe me," he asserted; and then asked: "Why has your sister nymph retreated from the field? I could entertain the pair of you." As Flora's only answer to this assurance was a further, though perhaps not very earnest, effort to enter the caravan, he restrained her with appealing voice and gesture: "Please do not go." Flora looked at him quizzically. "Why should I stay, pretty gentleman?"