It was daylight still, and Lady Ellis stood for a minute at the window, open to the evening's loveliness. The sun had set, but some of its golden brightness lingered yet in the sky. Lady Ellis leaned from the window and plucked a rose from a tree within reach. Mademoiselle stood near; Mary Anne sat down on the music stool, her back to the room and her eyes busied with an uninteresting page of music, striking a bar of it now and again. "Are you fond of flowers, miladi?" asked the simple little Frenchwoman. "I think there's nothing so good hardly in the world." "You shall have this rose, then. Stay, let me place it in your waistband. There!--you will have the perfume now until it fades." Mademoiselle caught the delicate hand and imprinted a kiss upon it. Single-minded, simple-hearted, possessing no discernment at the best of times, artless as a child, she took all the sweet looks and kind tones for real. Lady Ellis sat down on an ottoman in front of the window, and graciously drew mademoiselle beside her. "Do you live in Paris?" "I live in Paris now with my mother. We have a sweet little appartement near the Rue Montagne--one room and a cabinet de toilette and a very little kitchen, and we are happy. We go to the Champs Elysées with our work on fine days, to sit there and see the world:--the fine toilettes and the little ones at play. It was long to be separated from her, all the years that I was here." "How many were they?" "Seven. Yes, miladi, seven! But what will you? I had to gain. My mother she has a very small rente, and I came here. Mr. Thornycroft he was liberal to me--he is liberal to all,--and I saved enough to have on my side a little rente too. I went home when it was decided I should leave my pupil, and took my mother from the pension where she had stayed: and now we are happy together." A thought crossed Lady Ellis that the charming apartment near the Rue Montague, and the mother in it, might prove some impediment to her scheme. Well--it would require the greater diplomacy. "Is your mother old?" "She will be sixty-five on the day of the All-Saints; and I was forty last month," added mademoiselle, with the candour as to age that is characteristic of a Frenchwoman. Suddenly, just as Lady Ellis was clasping the withered brown hand with a sweet smile, mademoiselle, without intending the least discourtesy, started up, her eyes fixed upon the plateau. "Ah, bah," she said, sitting down again. "It is but the douanier--the preventive man." Lady Ellis naturally looked out, and saw a man pacing along the border of the plateau. The superstition said to be connected with the place came into her mind, but did not stay there. "You were here in the time of Mrs. Thornycroft, mademoiselle?" "Ah, yes; she did not die for a long while after I came." "She had years of ill health, I have heard. What was the matter with her?"