when she was a bride.

Count Hector, who took a great pleasure in explaining all the past
history of the place to Mary, had built himself a fine new house in
what remained of the old park, and a quarter of a mile away from the
old manor-house. Every room of the latter was shown to her; old wood
panels still remained, prettily painted in a by-gone fashion; old
documents, and parchment deeds, and leases concerning fish-ponds,
farms, and the like, were brought out for her inspection, signed by
my grandfather Pasquier, my great-grandfather Boismorinel, and our
great-great-grandmother and her husband, Mathurin Budes, the lord of
Verny le Moustier; and the tradition of Gatienne, _la belle Verriere_
(also nicknamed _la reine de Hongrie_, it seems) still lingered in the
county; and many old people still remembered, more or less correctly,
"Le Chant du Triste Commensal," which a hundred years ago had been in
everybody's mouth.

She was said to have been the tallest and handsomest woman in Anjou, of
an imperious will and very masculine character, but immensely popular
among rich and poor alike; of indomitable energy, and with a finger in
every pie; but always more for the good of others than her own--a
typical, managing, business-like French woman, and an exquisite
musician to boot.

Such was our common ancestress, from whom, no doubt, we drew our love of
music and our strange, almost hysterical susceptibility to the power of
sound; from whom had issued those two born nightingales of our
race--Seraskier, the violinist, and my father, the singer. And, strange
to say, her eyebrows met at the bridge of her nose just like mine, and
from under them beamed the luminous, black-fringed, gray-blue eyes of