"Certainly, certainly, my dear." "Is that Miss Van Heldre?" said the lady, raising her glass once more. "I beg your pardon, my child: I hope you are well." "Quite well, thank you, Miss Marguerite Vine," said Madelaine quietly, and her bright young face looked perfectly calm, though there was a touch of sarcasm in her tone. "Louise, dearest, my tea a little sweeter, please." The meal progressed, and the stiffness produced by the _entree_ of the host's sister--it was her own term for her appearance--soon wore off, the lady being very quiet as she discussed the viands placed before her with a very excellent appetite. Mrs Van Heldre prattled pleasantly on, with plenty of homely commonsense, to her host. Van Heldre threw in a word now and then, joked Louise and his daughter, and made a wrinkle on his broad forehead, which was his way of making a note. The note he made was that a suspicion which had previously entered his brain was correct. "He's taken with her," he said to himself, as he glanced at Louise and then at Duncan Leslie, who seemed to be living in a dream. As a rule he was an energetic, quick, and sensible man; on this occasion he was particularly silent, and when he spoke to either Madelaine or Louise, it was in a softened voice. Van Heldre looked at his daughter. Madelaine looked at her father, and they thoroughly read each other's thoughts, the girl's bright grey eyes saying to him as plainly as could be-- "You are quite right." "Well," said Van Heldre to himself, as he placed a spoonful of black currant jam on his plate, and then over that two piled-up table-spoonfuls of clotted cream--"she's as nice and true-hearted a girl as ever stepped, and Leslie's a man, every inch of him. I'd have said _yes_ in a moment if he had wanted my girl. I'm glad of it; but, poor fellow, what he'll have to suffer from that terrible old woman!" He had just thought this, and was busy composing a _nocturne_ or a _diurne_--probably the latter from its tints of red and yellow--upon his plate, which flowed with jam and cream, when Aunt Marguerite, who had eaten all she wished, began to stir her tea with courtly grace, and raised her voice in continuation of something she had been saying, but it was twenty-four hours before. "Yes, Mr Pradelle," she said, so that everyone should hear: "my memories of the past are painful, and yet a delight. We old Huguenots are proud of our past." "You must be, madam." "And you too," said the lady. "I feel sure that if you will take the trouble you will find that I am right. The Pradelles must have been of our people." "I'll look into it as soon as I get back to town," said the young man. Harry gave him a very vulgar wink. "Do," said Aunt Marguerite. "By the way, I don't think I told you that though my brother persists in calling himself Vine, our name is des Vignes, and we belong to one of the oldest families in Auvergne."