regulation toilet for dinner.  The pair had asked questions of their guide, the gardener, who told them so much of Moreau’s beauty that they felt the necessity of “rigging themselves up” (studio slang).  They, therefore, put on their most superlative suits and then walked over to the steward’s lodge, piloted by Jacques Moreau, the eldest son, a hardy youth, dressed like an English boy in a handsome jacket with a turned-over collar, who was spending his vacation like a fish in water on the estate where his father and mother reigned as aristocrats.

“Mamma,” he said, “here are the two artists sent down by Monsieur Schinner.”

Madame Moreau, agreeably surprised, rose, told her son to place chairs, and began to display her graces.

“Mamma, the Husson boy is with papa,” added the lad; “shall I fetch him?”

“You need not hurry; go and play with him,” said his mother.

The remark “you need not hurry” proved to the two artists the unimportance of their late travelling companion in the eyes of their hostess; but it also showed, what they did not know, the feeling of a step-mother against a step-son.  Madame Moreau, after seventeen years of married life, could not be ignorant of the steward’s attachment to Madame Clapart and the little Husson, and she hated both mother and child so vehemently that it is not surprising that Moreau had never before risked bringing Oscar to Presles.

“We are requested, my husband and myself,” she said to the two artists, “to do you the honors of the chateau.  We both love art, and, above all, artists,” she added in a mincing tone; “and I beg you to make yourselves at home here.  In the country, you know, every one should be at their ease; one must feel wholly at liberty, or life is too insipid.  We have already had Monsieur Schinner with us.”

Mistigris gave a sly glance at his companion.

“You know him, of course?” continued Estelle, after a slight pause.

“Who does not know him, madame?” said the painter.

“Knows him like his double,” remarked Mistigris.

“Monsieur Grindot told me your name,” said Madame Moreau to the painter.  “But—­”

“Joseph Bridau,” he replied, wondering with what sort of woman he had to do.

Mistigris began to rebel internally against the patronizing manner of the steward’s wife; but he waited, like Bridau, for some word which might give him his cue; one of those words “de singe a dauphin” which artists, cruel, born-observers of the ridiculous—­the pabulum of their pencils—­seize with such avidity.  Meantime Estelle’s clumsy hands and feet struck their eyes, and presently a word, or phrase or two, betrayed her past, and quite out of keeping with the elegance of her dress, made the two young fellows aware of their prey.  A single glance at each other was enough to arrange a scheme that they should take Estelle seriously on her own ground, and thus find amusement enough during the time of their stay.