She wore a little old-fashioned brooch yesterday, and said, ‘_Voilà, la reconnoissez-vous?_ Last year when you were here, it was in the country;’ and she smiled at him: and the dear old boy gave a sort of groan and dropped his head in his hand. I know what it is. I’ve gone through it myself. I kept for six months an absurd ribbon of that infernal little flirt Fanny Freeman. Don’t you remember how angry I was when you abused her? “‘Your father and I knew each other when we were children, my friend,’ the Countess said to me (in the sweetest French accent). He was looking into the garden of the house where they live, in the Rue Saint Dominique. ‘You must come and see me often, always. You remind me of him,’ and she added, with a very sweet kind smile, ‘Do you like best to think that he was better-looking than you, or that you excel him?’ I said I should like to be like him. But who is? There are cleverer fellows, I dare say; but where is there such a good one? I wonder whether he was very fond of Madame de Florac? The old Count does not show. He is quite old, and wears a pigtail. We saw it bobbing over his garden chair. He lets the upper part of his house; Major-General the Honourable Zeno F. Pokey, of Cincinnati, U.S., lives in it. We saw Mrs. Pokey’s carriage in the court, and her footmen smoking cigars there; a tottering old man with feeble legs, as old as old Count de Florac, seemed to be the only domestic who waited on the family below. “Madame de Florac and my father talked about my profession. The Countess said it was a _belle carrière_. The Colonel said it was better than the army. ‘_Ah oui, monsieur_,’ says she very sadly. And then he said, ‘that presently I should very likely come to study at Paris, when he knew there would be a kind friend to watch over _son garçon_.’ “‘But you will be here to watch over him yourself, _mon ami?_’ says the French lady. “Father shook his head. ‘I shall very probably have to go back to India,’ he said. ‘My furlough is expired. I am now taking my extra leave. If I can get my promotion, I need not return. Without that I cannot afford to live in Europe. But my absence in all probability will be but very short,’ he said. ‘And Clive is old enough now to go on without me.’ “Is this the reason why father has been so gloomy for some months past? I thought it might have been some of my follies which made him uncomfortable; and you know I have been trying my best to amend—I have not half such a tailor’s bill this year as last. I owe scarcely anything. I have paid off Moss every halfpenny for his confounded rings and gimcracks. I asked father about this melancholy news as we walked away from Madame de Florac.