thought, a very pretty fortune; and evidently the two were made for each other. They had similar tastes and habits in many points; one was twenty-five, the other eighteen; one dark, the other fair; one impulsive and high-spirited, with quick French blood in her veins, the other tranquil, with all the English ballast necessary. Altogether, it was such a marriage as might have been made in heaven; and if heaven had not seen fit to do it, Madame de Mirfleur felt herself strong enough to remedy this inadvertence. It seemed to her that she would be neglecting her chief duty as Reine’s mother if she allowed this opportunity to slip through her hands. To be sure, it would have been more according to _les convenances_, had there been a third party at hand, a mutual friend to undertake the negotiation; but, failing any one else, Madame de Mirfleur felt that, rather than lose such an “occasion,” she must, for once, neglect the _convenances_, and put herself into the breach. “I do not understand how it is that your friends do not marry you,” she said one day when they were walking together. “Ah, you laugh, Monsieur Everard. I know that is not your English way; but believe me, it is the duty of the friends of every young person. It is a dangerous thing to choose for yourself; for how should you know what is in a young girl? You can judge by nothing but looks and outside manners, which are very deceitful, while a mother or a judicious friend would sound her character. You condemn our French system, you others, but that is because you don’t know. For example, when I married my present husband, M. de Mirfleur, it was an affair of great deliberation. I did not think at first that his property was so good as I had a right to expect, and there was some scandal about his grandparents, which did not quite please me. But all that was smoothed away in process of time, and a personal interview convinced me that I should find in him everything that a reasonable woman desires. And so I do; we are as happy as the day. With poor Herbert’s father the affair was very different. There was no deliberation--no time for thought. With my present experience, had I known that daughters do not inherit in England, I should have drawn back, even at the last moment. But I was young, and my friends were not so prudent as they ought to have been, and we did what you call fall in love. Ah! it is a mistake! a mistake! In France things are a great deal better managed. I wish I could convert you to my views.” “It would be very easy for Madame de Mirfleur to convert me to anything,” said Everard, with a skill which he must have caught from her, and which, to tell the truth, occasioned himself some surprise.