She read aloud Detricand's description of his visit to the Castle of
Bercy, and of the meeting with Philip. "'See what comes of a name!'"
wrote Detricand. "'Here was a poor prisoner whose ancestor, hundreds of
years ago, may or mayn't have been a relative of the d'Avranches of
Clermont, when a disappointed duke, with an eye open for heirs, takes a
fancy to the good-looking face of the poor prisoner, and voila! you have
him whisked off to a palace, fed on milk and honey, and adopted into the
family. Then a pedigree is nicely grown on a summer day, and this fine
young Jersey adventurer is found to be a green branch from the old root;
and there's a great blare of trumpets, and the States of the duchy are
called together to make this English officer a prince--and that's the
Thousand and One Nights in Arabia, Ma'm'selle Carterette.'"

Guida was sitting rigid and still. In the slight pause Carterette made,
a hundred confused torturing thoughts swam through her mind and presently
floated into the succeeding sentences of the letter:

"'As for me, I'm like Rabot's mare, I haven't time to laugh at my own
foolishness. I'm either up to my knees in grass or clay fighting
Revolutionists, or I'm riding hard day and night till I'm round-backed
like a wood-louse, to make up for all the good time I so badly lost in
your little island. You wouldn't have expected that, my friend with the
tongue that stings, would you? But then, Ma'm'selle of the red slippers,
one is never butted save by a dishorned cow--as your father used to
say."'

Carterette paused again, saying in an aside: "That is M'sieu' all over,
all so gay. But who knows? For he says, too, that the other day a-
fighting Fontenay, five thousand of his men come across a cavalry as they
run to take the guns that eat them up like cabbages, and they drop on