aggressive and reproachful examples of country versus town. M. Galland's apprehensions, clearly demonstrated to be of the most idle description, would vanish; he would sleep on his two ears, as the saying hath it; and worry the grandmother no more. On the evening of her arrival, the solicitor dined with her, anxious for a report as to the doings in Touraine. He hearkened to her wisdom, nor strove to stem the ocean of her prate, which babbled on unceasingly. She was provoked to observe that he was absent, and that his moody brow remained clouded despite the rosiness of her report. Of course, he did not believe her. Nobody ever had, worse luck for the world in general; but it was really just a shade too insolent to have sent her all that distance in a ram-shackle old shanderydan, and, the pilgrimage completed, to treat the result of her observations as mere draught whistling through a keyhole. The old lady was so hurt that she was unable to control her vexation. "Of course, I'm a fool," she gurgled. "If I'm so incurably imbecile, why did you not go yourself? These children, I suppose, are no evidence, with their gladsome eyes and ruddy faces!" M. Galland did not reply at once, for he was thinking. "It might have been as well, perhaps, madame, if I had accompanied you," he slowly said at last. "The children, thank goodness! are in perfect health. The marquis, you admit, was absent; his brothers practically in possession. One lady and two gentlemen--a cosy party of three." "Wrong!" cried the maréchale in triumph. "Always the same. You interrupt and jump at conclusions without having the decent civility to hear me out. Some men are insufferably rude." "How wrong?" enquired the solicitor, anxiously. "There were two ladies in the house; but the second held so much aloof that I was hardly aware of her presence. That struck me as a little odd, for she was an invited guest--a Mademoiselle Brunelle, at one time governess to the little ones." M. Galland started, and the cloud on his brow deepened. That woman again! She whom he had himself expelled by the express orders of De Brèze. How had she wormed herself into the house a second time. And she held aloof, too--was not one of the family circle--sure sign that her presence there was contrary to the wish of the marquise. "Of a certainty," reflected the solicitor, "I should have done well to go down myself. Strange as it may seem, it looks very much as if the forebodings of madame were to be realized."