the driver slowly raised his whip in salute. The light from a lamp swinging from a bracket on the wall fell upon her, and the traveller saw that she was young, two or three and twenty, her figure slight and supple. Her dark gray habit may have made her look smaller than she really was, and the mare, which she sat like an accomplished horsewoman, was a big and powerful animal, almost too much, it seemed, for those little gloved hands which held the reins to manage. Yet there was strength in those little hands. There was a suggestion of strength about her altogether, strength of will and purpose. It shone out of a pair of dark gray eyes set under gracefully curved brows and veiled with long lashes. The firm little mouth showed it, and there was just enough suspicion of squareness about the chin to emphasize it. She had nut-brown hair, a curl of which fell upon her forehead from underneath a gray astrakhan cap, and the little head was poised proudly on her shoulders. No ordinary[9] woman this, not one to be easily swayed by love or any other passion, a woman to rule rather than be ruled.

[9]

"Who is that?" asked the traveller, leaning toward the driver as the cavalcade passed on.

"A beautiful woman," was the slow answer.

"But her name?"

The driver cracked his whip and the diligence began to rattle over the cobbles again.

"Some day she may be Duchess," he said, as though he was following his own train of thought rather than answering his companion's question.

There was no time to tempt him into being more explicit, for the horses turned a corner sharply, and with a shake of their harness stopped before a long, low building, on which the traveller could just decipher the words, Hôtel de la Croix Verte. It was an old house, redolent of the past, the lights within shining but faintly through the small windows. Its upper story projected over the narrow footway, and its lower walls bulged outward, as though they had grown tired of the load they had had to bear so long. Its age seemed to have infected its inhabitants, too, for some moments elapsed before the door opened, and a man came out leisurely to receive the parcels which the diligence had brought. That it had brought a traveller also did not excite him, nor was he in any hurry to welcome him. Perhaps the traveller was half dreaming, for he almost started when the man turned and spoke to him.

"Yes; it's a long journey," he answered, "and I am ready to 

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