"Does she often come to Tours?"

"She never goes there. However," he added, correcting himself, "she
did go there lately to the ball given to the Duc d'Angouleme, who was
very gracious to her husband."

"It was she!" I exclaimed.

"She! who?"

"A woman with beautiful shoulders."

"You will meet a great many women with beautiful shoulders in
Touraine," he said, laughing. "But if you are not tired we can cross
the river and call at Clochegourde and you shall renew acquaintance
with those particular shoulders."

I agreed, not without a blush of shame and pleasure. About four
o'clock we reached the little chateau on which my eyes had fastened
from the first. The building, which is finely effective in the
landscape, is in reality very modest. It has five windows on the
front; those at each end of the facade, looking south, project about
twelve feet,--an architectural device which gives the idea of two
towers and adds grace to the structure. The middle window serves as a
door from which you descend through a double portico into a terraced
garden which joins the narrow strip of grass-land that skirts the
Indre along its whole course. Though this meadow is separated from the
lower terrace, which is shaded by a double line of acacias and
Japanese ailanthus, by the country road, it nevertheless appears from
the house to be a part of the garden, for the road is sunken and