set of people to make his situation more bearable--his and hers also. Why could she not let herself drift in calm content, as he had done? It always came back to that, and every time he was the more convinced of it. His wife was an unreasonable creature, who persisted in pining for what she could not get instead of making the best of what she had. Perhaps he had not behaved quite nicely in the matter of the prodigies. Yet after all, was it not essential that they should receive trained instruction, and had they not of their own accord turned from their mother to the governess? He had never said, "My dears, you must care no longer for mamma, and adore your governess." Was it not evident that mamma wearied them as much as she did him, while their instructress was the most delightful comrade that ever breathed, as well as abnormally clever?

With this course of argument conscience was convinced, or pretended to be, and curled itself up and slept, and would have continued thus in charmed repose, but for this new disturbance. There can be no denying that there must be something radically wrong, when a woman who used to be serene leaps with felonious intent out of a wherry. Though everyone was told that the affair was an accident, nobody believed it. The marquis was ashamed and dreaded a scandal.

Of course, when the story reached them, the Montbazon party came trundling over in the shanderydan, with goggling eyes and ears acock, to inquire into the extraordinary tale. Clovis received them with scant courtesy, but the old baroness was not to be put off with a cold shoulder, and Angelique took little trouble to cloak her suspicions. What could madame have been doing--navigating the Loire in the middle of the night, and tumbling overboard? Why choose so strange an hour for a solitary excursion, and why fall out of so clumsy and broad-beamed a craft? Could the dear marquis explain? The dear marquis became testy, and, shrugging his shoulders, advised the ladies to visit madame who was in bed, but well enough to tell them all about it. The ladies sat on either side of the great catafalque, under shadow of the blue velvet curtains, and sniffed at one another with meaning across the counterpane. Cross-questioned by the baron as they drove home, the baroness pursed her lips in ominous silence, while Angelique remarked, "If with those sad eyes welling with tears, she persists that she is happy, and vows that on that night her foot slipped, in courtesy we must pretend to believe her." To which the baron pertinently replied, "Foot slipped, indeed! and in the middle of the river, too. What was it doing on the gunwale?"

Clovis knew that 

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