Of course my wife turned her face away indignantly on the conjugal pillow, and burst into tears.  Of course upon that, “Mr.” made his excuses, and “Mrs.” had her own way.

Before the week was out we rode over to Underbridge, and duly offered to Francis Raven a place in our service as supernumerary groom.

At first the poor fellow seemed hardly able to realize his own extraordinary good fortune.  Recovering himself, he expressed his gratitude modestly and becomingly.  Mrs. Fairbank’s ready sympathies overflowed, as usual, at her lips.  She talked to him about our home in France, as if the worn, gray-headed hostler had been a child.  “Such a dear old house, Francis; and such pretty gardens!  Stables!  Stables ten times as big as your stables here—­quite a choice of rooms for you.  You must learn the name of our house—­Maison Rouge.  Our nearest town is Metz.  We are within a walk of the beautiful River Moselle.  And when we want a change we have only to take the railway to the frontier, and find ourselves in Germany.”

Listening, so far, with a very bewildered face, Francis started and changed color when my wife reached the end of her last sentence.  “Germany?” he repeated.

“Yes.  Does Germany remind you of anything?”

The hostler’s eyes looked down sadly on the ground.  “Germany reminds me of my wife,” he replied.

“Indeed!  How?”

“She once told me she had lived in Germany—­long before I knew her—­in the time when she was a young girl.”

“Was she living with relations or friends?”

“She was living as governess in a foreign family.”

“In what part of Germany?”

“I don’t remember, ma’am.  I doubt if she told me.”

“Did she tell you the name of the family?”

“Yes, ma’am.  It was a foreign name, and it has slipped my memory long since.  The head of the family was a wine grower in a large way of business—­I remember that.”

“Did you hear what sort of wine he grew?  There are wine growers in our neighborhood.  Was it Moselle wine?”

“I couldn’t say, ma’am, I doubt if I ever heard.”

There the conversation dropped.  We engaged to communicate with Francis Raven before we left England, and took our leave.  I had made arrangements to pay our round of visits to English friends, and to return to Maison Rouge in the summer.  On the eve of departure, certain difficulties in connection with the management of some landed property of mine in Ireland obliged us to alter our plans.  Instead of getting back to our house in France in the Summer, we only returned a week or two before Christmas.  Francis Raven accompanied us, and was duly established, in the nominal capacity of stable keeper, among the servants at Maison Rouge.