whom he had seen with Lady Ongar in Bolton Street.  She got up at once, having glanced at the name upon the card, and seemed to know all about him.  She shook hands with him cordially, almost squeezing his hand, and bade him sit down near her on the sofa.  “She was so glad to see him, for her dear Julie’s sake.  Julie, as of course he knew, was at ‘Ongere’ Park.  Oh! so happy”—­which, by the by, he did not know—­“and would be up in the course of next week.  So many things to do, of course, Mr. Clavering.  The house, and the servants, and the park, and the beautiful things of a large country establishment!  But it was delightful, and Julie was quite happy!”

No people could be more unlike to each other than this brother and his sister.  No human being could have taken Madame Gordeloup for an English-woman, though it might be difficult to judge, either from her language or her appearance, of the nationality to which she belonged.  She spoke English with great fluency, but every word uttered declared her not to be English.  And when she was most fluent she was most incorrect in her language.  She was small, eager, and quick, and appeared quite as anxious to talk as her brother had been to hold his tongue.  She lived in a small room on the first floor of a small house; and it seemed to Harry that she lived alone.  But he had not been long there before she had told him all her history, and explained to him most of her circumstances.  That she kept back something is probable; but how many are there who can afford to tell everything?

Her husband was still living, but he was at St. Petersburg.  He was a Frenchman by family, but had been born in Russia.  He had been attached to the Russian embassy in London, but was now attached to diplomacy in general in Russia.  She did not join him, because she loved England—­oh, so much!  And, perhaps, her husband might come back again some day.  She did not say that she had not seen him for ten years, and was not quite sure whether he was dead or alive; but had she made a clean breast in all things, she might have done so.  She said that she was a good deal still at the Russian embassy; but she did not say that she herself was a paid spy.  Nor do I say so now, positively; but that was the character given to her by many who knew her.  She called her brother Edouard, as though Harry had known the count all his life; and always spoke of Lady Ongar as Julie.  She uttered one or two little hints which seemed to imply that she knew everything that had passed between “Julie” and Harry Clavering in early days; and never mentioned Lord Ongar without some term of violent abuse.

“Horrid wretch!” she said, pausing over all the r’s in the name she had called him.  “It began, you know, from the very first.  Of course he had been a fool.  An old roue is always a fool to marry.  What does he get, you know, for his money?  A pretty face.  He’s tired of that as soon as it’s his own.  Is it not so, Mr. Clavering?  But other people