inelegant feats on parallel bars and ladders, while he was wont to boast
that she could out-fence any boy at the school. She was an expert
swimmer too, and there were rumours, that at summer bathing excursions
she wore a somewhat similar garment to that of the gymnasium, instead of
one of those long serge gowns reaching to the ankles that ladies were
wont to disport themselves in amidst the surf--gowns in which it was
impossible to do anything but bob up and down at the end of a rope.

It was curious that a man who was half a Frenchman should have been the
one to have such advanced ideas on female education, but then Mr. Eliot
was the son of a refugee, which says much. For those French aristocrats,
who never turned hand to a task in their lives till the Revolution,
lived to learn very differently after their flight. The farm and the
shop taught what the court had failed to impart, and the blood that
despite folly directs so truly in moments of extremity did not fail
them. The children who, had the course of events never been ruffled,
would have grown up in a vicious and futile court, were forced to
practise economies and learn at first hand the dignity of labour. With
those families who returned to the increasing viciousness which
culminated under Napoleon III. the lesson may not always have been
lasting, but for those who, like the forbears of Mr. Eliot, allied
themselves with their English hosts, and remained where they were, the
hard life of struggle, if the alliance had not been rich, continued the
new philosophy. Added to all this normal cause, Hilaria's father was
certainly an original, or rather one of those people considered so
because they are ahead of their time and condemned to misunderstanding
in consequence.

None of it mattered to Mr. Eliot, who drifted about the world in a daze
that, had it been a happy one, would have made him an enviable man. As