and political events kept me away from Frapesle until recently. Madame de Mortsauf is a woman who would hold the highest position wherever she might be.”      

       “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 hemmed in on one side by the terrace, on the other side by a Norman hedge. The terraces being very well managed put enough distance between the house and the river to avoid the inconvenience of too great proximity to water, without losing the charms of it. Below the house are the stables, coach-house, green-houses, and kitchen, the various openings to which form an arcade. The roof is charmingly rounded at the angles, and bears mansarde windows with carved mullions and leaden finials on their gables. This roof, no doubt much neglected during the Revolution, is stained by a sort of mildew produced by lichens and the reddish moss which grows on houses exposed to the sun. The 

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