plenty, and we could not do better with it."

Then followed the happiest little dinner party that had ever taken place
beneath the abbé's roof. Madame Scott explained how her husband had
bought the château as a surprise for her, and that neither she nor her
sister had seen it until that morning.

"Now, tell me," she suggested, "what they said about the new owner." The
old priest blushed, and was at a loss to answer. "Well, you are a
soldier," she continued, turning to Lieutenant Reynaud, "and you will
tell me. Did they say that I had been a beggar?"

"Yes, I heard that said."

"And that I had been a performer in a travelling circus?"

"That also I heard said," he admitted.

"I thank you for your frankness; and now let me tell you that, while I
can see nothing in either case that would be any disgrace to me, the
story does not happen to be true. I have known what it is to be poor,
for my parents died eight years ago, leaving us only a great lawsuit,
but my father's last wish was that we should fight it to the end. With
the aid of the son of one of his old friends, now my husband, we fought
and won. That is how I came into my fortune. The stories you have heard
were invented by spiteful Paris journalists."

After the ladies had taken their departure for Paris, the Abbé
Constantin was as happy as he had so lately been miserable. And as for
Lieutenant Reynaud, the vision of their fresh and charming faces was