Hathercourt. Molesworth Mrs.

on the whole, you prefer England. You would not like to marry a Frenchman, would you, Alys?”

      “Of course not,” replied Alys, “and of all things I would not like to be married in the French way, hardly knowing anything about the man I was to marry. Ermengarde de Tarannes, Laurence, that pretty girl whom we saw at the Embassy, is to be married to a Marquis something or other, Mrs Brabazon told me, whom she has really only seen three times, for he is now in Italy, and will only return the week before the marriage. Fancy how horrible!”

      Mr Cheviott smiled.

      “You are a regular little John Bull, child,” he said; “still I understand your feeling. There is something to be said, however, in favour of the French way of arranging such things, where the parents or guardians of a girl are sensible people, that is to say. Perhaps a union of both ways would be perfection.”

      “How do you mean?” asked Alys.

      “Supposing a case where a girl had known a man nearly all her life, and had got to care for him unconsciously almost, and that at the same time he was the very man of all others whom, for every reason, her parents, or whoever stood in their place, wished her to marry, would not such a case be pretty near perfection?”

      “Rather too perfect,” said Alys. “The chances are that the hero would spoil it all by not wanting to marry her.”

      Mr Cheviott looked annoyed.

      “Don’t be flippant, Alys,” he said; “of course that part of it I was taking for granted.”

      “I didn’t mean to be flippant,” said Alys, penitently; “I never want to vex you, Laurence. I’d do anything to please you. I’m not sure that I would not even marry to please you, if you want to try an experiment of the French way.”

      She looked up in her brother’s face with a smile, and he could not help returning it.

      “If you promise never to marry to displease me, I shall be satisfied,” he answered. “But, after all, it’s a difficult question. I have known some English marriages turn out quite – ah, surely more miserable than ever a French one could.”

      “But what has put marrying so much into your head to-day? This morning you were distressing yourself about Arthur’s prospects, and now you are worrying yourself about mine?”

      “Not worrying myself. It is only natural I should think about your future sometimes. And if your memory is not very capricious, Alys, I think it will tell you that it was yourself, not I, who first began talking about marriage this morning, when Arthur’s letters came. Do you remember?”

      “Yes; but still – ”

      “Here we are at Madame de Briancourt’s,” interrupted Mr Cheviott.

      “Madame” was at home, and the brother and sister made their way across the spacious entrance, along a corridor, then through a suite of rooms, hardly so beautiful by daylight as when Alys had last seen them on the evening of a grand reception, to a small boudoir at the very end of all. As she passed along, Alys’s thoughts continued in the same direction.

      “But still,” she repeated to herself, “I don’t understand Laurence. I am sure he has got something in his head – about Arthur – or about me; still perhaps it is not that: he may have been annoyed about something quite different, and Arthur’s letter may not have anything to do with our going away in such a hurry. Anyway, I can leave it to Laurence; I am not going to bother my head about it, for there may be nothing in it, after all.”

      And, two minutes afterwards, her head was full of other things, for there was what, to Alys’s eyes, looked quite a crowd of gayly dressed ladies and gentlemen when the door at the end of the long suite was thrown open, and the brother and sister found themselves, for the moment, the observed of all observers.

      Chapter Seven

      This Very Little World

      Alonzo. – What is this maid with whom thou wast at play?

      Your eldest acquaintance cannot be three hours.

Tempest.

      For the beautiful Miss Cheviott, little though she had been seen in Paris, had been seen enough to make a considerable sensation, especially as rumour, in this case with somewhat more foundation than usual, added the epithet heritière to the rest of Alys’s charms. Parisian papas and mammas sighed at the perversity of the British customs, which forbade their entering the lists on behalf of their eligible Adolphes and Gustaves, and the representatives of the English upper ten thousand, then in Paris, would have been very ready to make great friends with the brother and sister. But their advances were hardly reciprocated; Alys’s inexperience failed to appreciate them, and Mr Cheviott’s somewhat “stand-off” manner was not encouraging. Ill-natured people made fun of him for “mounting guard over his sister,” more amiably inclined observers pronounced such brotherly devotion to be really touching, but one and all fell short of attaining to anything like intimacy with the owner of Romary or the reputed heiress.

      So some amount of curiosity, added to the interest inspired by the two Cheviotts and the buzz of conversation in Madame de Briancourt’s boudoir, perceptibly subsided for a minute or two on their first appearing. Alys, in her simplicity, hardly observed this, or, if she did so, was not struck by it as anything unusual, but Mr Cheviott noticed and was a little annoyed by it.

      “I would not have called here this afternoon, if I had known we should find Madame de Briancourt ‘at home’ in such force,” he said to an English lady of his acquaintance after paying his respects to his hostess.

      “Ah, you have not been long enough in Paris to be quite au fait of everything,” said Mrs Brabazon, good-naturedly. “There is always a great crowd here on Thursdays. But why should you object to it? It is all the more amusing.”

      “I am not fond of crowds, and, as for my sister, she is quite unaccustomed to anything of the kind. She is hardly ‘out’,” he added, with a smile.

      Mrs Brabazon smiled too. “I can quite believe it,” she replied, “and I can, too, prophesy very certainly that, in her present character as your sister, she will not be ‘out’ long.”

      She looked up at Mr Cheviott expecting to see that the inferred compliment had pleased him. But, to her surprise, far from testifying any gratification the expression of his face seemed rather to tell of annoyance, and, being a good-natured woman, Mrs Brabazon felt sorry, and began wondering what there could have been in her harmless little speech so evidently to “rub him the wrong way.” Alys, sitting at a little distance talking to a young lady to whom Madame de Briancourt had introduced her, happened at this moment to look round and caught sight of her brother’s face.

      “Laurence is vexed at something,” she thought, and, moving her chair a little so as to bring herself within speaking distance of her brother and Mrs Brabazon, she tried to think how she could give a turn to the conversation which so evidently was not to Mr Cheviott’s taste. The “turn” came from another direction. A tall, thin boy of sixteen, or thereabouts, a boy with a somewhat anxious and almost girlishly sweet expression of face, came softly and half timidly across the room in Mrs Brabazon’s direction.

      “Aunt,” he said, hesitatingly, “I think it is getting rather late – that is to say, if you are still thinking of a drive.”

      “I was just thinking so myself, Anselm. Just you find out, my dear boy, if the carriage has come; it was to follow us here, you know, and I shall be ready in a moment.”

      The boy turned away to do as she asked.

      “That is my other nephew – Anselm Brooke,” she explained to Mr Cheviott. “Basil you know?”

      “Oh, yes,” said Alys’s brother, with evident interest. “How is he, poor fellow? I was just going to ask you. Better, I hope?”

      Mrs Brabazon shook her head, and the tears filled her eyes.

      “There will be no real ‘better’ for him, I feel sure,” she said, sadly. “Yet my brother will not believe