of the floor the room might have been a boudoir in a manor-house.  On the slender-legged, polished mahogany table lay books in tasteful bindings; a diamond-paned bookcase stood in the corner; a fauteuil and various other chairs which might have come from the hands of an Adam were ranged about.  Tall silver candlesticks graced each end of the little mantel-shelf, and between them were two Lowestoft vases having the Temple coat of arms.

It might have been half an hour that I waited, now pacing the floor, now throwing myself into the arm-chair by the fireplace.  Anxiety for Mrs. Temple, problems that lost themselves in a dozen conjectures, all idle—­ these agitated me almost beyond my power of self-control.  Once I felt for the miniature, took it out, and put it back without looking at it.  At last I was startled to my feet by the opening of the door, and Madame de Montmery came in.  She closed the door softly behind her, with the deft quickness and decision of movement which a sixth sense had told me she possessed, crossed the room swiftly, and stood confronting me.

“She is easy again, now,” she said simply.  “It is one of her attacks.  I wish you might have seen me before you told her what you had to say to her.”

“I wish indeed that I had known you were here.”

She ignored this, whether intentionally, I know not.

“It is her heart, poor lady!  I am afraid she cannot live long.”  She seated herself in one of the straight chairs.  “Sit down, Mr. Ritchie,” she said; “I am glad you waited.  I wanted to talk with you.”

“I thought that you might, Madame la Vicomtesse,” I answered.

She made no gesture, either of surprise or displeasure.

“So you knew,” she said quietly.

“I knew you the moment you appeared in the doorway,” I replied.  It was not just what I meant to say.

There flashed over her face that expression of the miniature, the mouth repressing the laughter in the brown eyes.

“Montmery is one of my husband’s places,” she said.  “When Antoinette asked me to come here and watch over Mrs. Temple, I chose the name.”

“And Mrs. Temple has never suspected you?”

“I think not.  She thinks I came at Mr. Clark’s request.  And being a lady, she does not ask questions.  She accepts me for what I appear to be.”

It seemed so strange to me to be talking here in New Orleans, in this little Spanish house, with a French vicomtesse brought up near the court of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette; nay, with Helene de St. Gre, whose portrait had twice come into my life by a kind of strange fatality (and was at that moment in my pocket), that I could scarce maintain my self-possession in her presence.  I had given the portrait, too, attributes and a character, and I found myself watching the lady with a breathless interest lest she should fail in any of these.  In the intimacy of the little room I felt as if I had known her always, and again, that