“Yes, indeed,” said Finette. “Oh, it cuts her to be so much older than the boy she married. She hates it. She’s as jealous as--a--a--tigress!” said Finette. “But it’s cool, ain’t it? Let’s go in,” and she turned back, saying to herself: “I’ll have to slip out after she’s abed, drat her!” They both vanished, and the next moment Norman de Vere appeared in the door-way of the summer-house, from whose shelter he had heard every word that had passed outside. His eyes blazed with indignation, and it was with difficulty that he had restrained himself from confronting the treacherous maid and sternly rebuking her for her flippancy. “The coarse, ungrateful, shameless creature! It is thus that she repays the confidence her mistress has reposed in her for years!” he thought, and he resolved that to-morrow Camille should hear the story, when he did not doubt that she would rid herself of the woman. Although smarting with resentment at the false and cruel charge Camille had brought against him, Norman de Vere was touched to the heart by the fact that Finette had betrayed. The story of her grief at finding in her rich, abundant tresses the first gray hair had a deep pathos for the man who loved Camille still, in spite of her caprices and cruelties. As he thought of her weeping over her misfortune before the hard, unsympathetic eyes of the secretly amused French maid, he forgot for a moment his own grievances; his manly heart grew warm with pitying love. “Poor Camille! Poor darling!” he murmured, “how cruelly sensitive she is over the slight disparity between our years! It is because she loves me well, in spite of her morbid fancies, and I wish I had been with her yesterday, instead of Finette, when she found that little silver thread. I would have taken her in my arms and kissed that hair so many times she would not have had the heart to remove it from her shining tresses. Perhaps she is grieving over it now, and I might comfort her. I will go to her now; I will risk another rebuff in the endeavor to make peace with that proud heart,” turning hurriedly toward the house. CHAPTER VII. Clever Finette found out long before she was summoned to dress her mistress next morning that a reconciliation had most probably taken place between the young husband and his jealous wife, and she was surprised to find her when she entered in one of her most captious moods. She made herself as disagreeable as possible, and when Finette was brushing out the splendid lengths of her waving hair, burst out suddenly: “If you find another gray hair, Finette, you need not gossip with Nance over it, taking ungrateful pleasure in ridiculing the mistress to whom you owe everything.” “Madame!” For once the wicked, imperturbable maid was taken by surprise. The ivory-backed brush fell from her nervous hand, and she recoiled in fear, realizing that her mistress had found her out for once. “Madame!” she exclaimed, shrilly, and Mrs. de Vere answered, angrily: