“Mamma, what a horrid picture!” chuckled Rose.

She then proposed that at his next visit they should all three make an earnest appeal to him to let them know what Edouard had decided.

But Josephine begged to be excused, feared it would be hardly delicate; and said languidly that for her part she felt they were in good hands, and prescribed patience.  The baroness acquiesced, and poor Rose and her curiosity were baffled on every side.

At last, one fine day, her torments were relieved without any further exertion on her part.  Jacintha bounced into the drawing-room with a notice that the commandant wanted to speak to Josephine a minute out in the Pleasaunce.

“How droll he is,” said Rose; “fancy sending in for a young lady like that.  Don’t go, Josephine; how, he would stare.”

“My dear, I no more dare disobey him than if I was one of his soldiers.”  And she laid down her work, and rose quietly to do what she was bid.

“Well,” said Rose, superciliously, “go to your commanding officer.  And, O Josephine, if you are worth anything at all, do get out of him what that Edouard has settled.”

Josephine kissed her, and promised to try.  After the first salutation, there was a certain hesitation about Raynal which Josephine had never seen a trace of in him before; so, to put him at his ease, and at the same time keep her promise to Rose, she asked timidly if their mutual friend had been able to suggest anything.

“What! don’t you know that I have been acting all along upon his instructions?” answered Raynal.

“No, indeed! and you have not told us what he advised.”

“Told you? why, of course not; they were secret instructions.  I have obeyed one set, and now I come to the other; and there is the difficulty, being a kind of warfare I know nothing about.”

“It must be savage warfare, then,” suggested the lady politely.

“Not a bit of it.  Now, who would have thought I was such a coward?”

Josephine was mystified; however, she made a shrewd guess.  “Do you fear a repulse from any one of us?  Then, I suppose, you meditate some extravagant act of generosity.”

“Not I.”

“Of delicacy, then.”

“Just the reverse.  Confound the young dog! why is he not here to help me?”

“But, after all,” suggested Josephine, “you have only to carry out his instructions.”

“That is true! that is true! but when a fellow is a coward, a poltroon, and all that sort of thing.”

This repeated assertion of cowardice on the part of the living Damascus blade that stood bolt-upright before her, struck Josephine as so funny that she laughed merrily, and bade him fancy it was only a fort he was attacking instead of the terrible Josephine; whom none but heroes feared, she assured him.

This encouragement, uttered in jest, was taken in earnest.  The soldier thanked her, and rallied visibly at the comparison.  “All right,” said he, “as you say, it is only a fort—­so—­mademoiselle!”