PRODIGY

"Certainement que j'y crois: tout lé monde lé sait; et d'ailleurs lé prêtre

me l'a dit."

Isabelle was an odd, blunt little creature. She added, sotto voce: "Pour

assurer vôtre salut là-haut, on ferait bien de vous brûler toute vive ici-bas."

I laughed, as, indeed, it was impossible to do otherwise.

* * * * *

Has the reader forgotten Miss Ginevra Fanshawe? If so, I must be al-

lowed to re-introduce that young lady as a thriving pupil of Madame

Beck's; for such she was. On her arrival in the Rue Fossette, two or three

days after my sudden settlement there, she encountered me with very little

surprise. She must have had good blood in her veins, for never was any

duchess more perfectly, radically, unaffectedly nonchalante than she: a

weak, transient amaze was all she knew of the sensation of wonder. Most of

her other faculties seemed to be in the same flimsy condition: her liking and