dark eyelashes formed a piquant contrast to her dreamy gray eyes and her
ivory skin. In her whole expression there was something quiet and
subdued, which was accentuated by her simple dress of black taffeta, and
by the little jet brooch and bracelet which were her sole ornaments.
Such was Adele Catinat, the only daughter of the famous Huguenot
cloth-merchant.

But if her dress was sombre, it was atoned for by the magnificence of
her companion. He was a man who might have been ten years her senior,
with a keen soldier face, small well-marked features, a carefully
trimmed black moustache, and a dark hazel eye which might harden to
command a man, or soften to supplicate a woman, and be successful at
either. His coat was of sky-blue, slashed across with silver braidings,
and with broad silver shoulder-straps on either side. A vest of white
calamanca peeped out from beneath it, and knee-breeches of the same
disappeared into high polished boots with gilt spurs upon the heels.
A silver-hilted rapier and a plumed cap lying upon a settle beside him
completed a costume which was a badge of honour to the wearer, for any
Frenchman would have recognised it as being that of an officer in the
famous Blue Guard of Louis the Fourteenth. A trim, dashing soldier he
looked, with his curling black hair and well-poised head. Such he had
proved himself before now in the field, too, until the name of Amory de
Catinat had become conspicuous among the thousands of the valiant lesser
_noblesse_ who had flocked into the service of the king.

They were first cousins, these two, and there was just sufficient
resemblance in the clear-cut features to recall the relationship.
De Catinat was sprung from a noble Huguenot family, but having lost his
parents early he had joined the army, and had worked his way without
influence and against all odds to his present position. His father's