lately neglected guests.

"Yours?" said Mrs. Purcell with coolness, still retaining it. "Why do
you think in French?"

"Because I choose!" said Marguerite, angrily. "I mean--How do you know
that I do?"

"Your exclamation, when highly excited or contemptuously indifferent, is
always in that tongue."

"Which am I now?"

"Really, you should know best. Here is your bawble"; and Mrs. Purcell
tossed it lightly into her hands, and went out.

It was a sheath of old morocco. The motion loosened the clasp, and the
contents, an ivory oval and a cushion of faded silk, fell to the floor.
Mr. Raleigh bent and regathered them; there was nothing for Marguerite
but to allow that he should do so. The oval had reversed in falling, so
that he did not see it; but, glancing at her before returning it, he
found her face and neck dyed deeper than the rose. Still reversed, he
was about to relinquish it, when Mrs. McLean passed, and, hearing the
scampering of little feet as they fled with booty, she also entered.

"Seeing you reminds me, Roger," said she. "What do you suppose has
become of that little miniature I told you of? I was showing it to
Marguerite the other night, and have not seen it since. I must have
mislaid it, and it was particularly valuable, for it was some nameless
thing that Mrs. Heath found among her mother's trinkets, and I begged it