"Not since last night, Mademoiselle," answered Hilda, looking at her friend with hard, dry eyes; "I cried so much last night that I don't think I shall ever shed a tear again. There must be an end, you know, even to tears." "My sweetest child, what in Heaven's name has happened? Your brother, Mr. Effecotte!" Louise Duprez gasped as she spoke the name. Edward Heathcote was her benefactor, that one Englishman whom she admired and honoured with all her heart and mind, whom she thought almost equal to the typical Frenchman, the French gentleman of a _régime_ that is almost forgotten, of a day that is dead. "My brother is quite well, at least as far as I know," answered Hilda, with sisterly indifference; and then she made Mdlle. Duprez sit down, and knelt at her feet, clasping her hands, and looking up at her earnestly. "My dear, kind friend, I want you to help me in a crisis of my life," she said. "To help you to run away with Mr. Grahame, I suppose. No, no, Hilda, _pas si bête_; I am your brother's friend above all things. If Mr. Effecotte disapproves of your marriage, I will do nothing to further it." "Pray don't be in such a hurry," said Hilda. "Hear my trouble first, and then help me to lighten it, if you can. I think you ought to know that I am not the kind of girl to make a runaway marriage." "Indeed, I know nothing of the kind about any English girl. Runaway marriages seem as common in this country as runaway knocks at my door." "Englishwomen run away before marriage, and Frenchwomen after," retorted Hilda. "I don't think your English matrons such irreproachable creatures," said the Parisienne. "There is your Lady Valeria Harborough, for instance, who had one of the best husbands in Christendom, and yet was always surrounded by a bevy of admirers, and made herself more talked about than any woman in Plymouth." "Was she really talked about?" asked Hilda eagerly. "Really, really. I don't mean to say that she was supposed to be actually incorrect in her conduct; but she brought her Indian manners back to England with her, and she had always her court of fools and fops about her. And now the papers are beginning to be impertinent about her--or, at least, this stupid little paper, which models itself on some of the London society papers." Mdlle. Duprez pointed to a periodical on the table at her side--a sheet of eight pages, printed on pink paper, and calling itself the _Plymouth Censor_. Hilda snatched it up, and ran her eye rapidly along the paragraphs, till she came to one worded thus: "Rumours are already afloat in privileged circles as to the probabilities of a second hymen for the beautiful widow of a general officer, lately gone over to the majority. Foremost in the betting stands a certain _ci-devant_ captain of Engineers, who saved the General's life by a dexterous shot in the jungle, and who has been _du dernier bien_ with the General's charming wife ever since. Ours is an age of rehabilitations."