Madame Agnes de la Mora sat placidly, her work basket by her side, busied about some lace she was mending. The Chevalier studied a number of military maps of Louisiana at his table. It was a pretty picture of domestic harmony, then quite unfashionable at Sceaux. A timid rap at the door, and a voice:
"Sister, may I come in?"
"Yes, child," and her sister Charlotte slipped silently in and sat herself upon the floor at Madame's feet. There was a striking similarity between the two. Madame, for all her dignified title, being but a year the elder, and she scant of twenty. Charlotte, somewhat slighter and more delicately colored, was even of greater beauty than her sister, with much promise for the years to come. To the casual observer, though, especially when viewed apart, they seemed almost reflections one of the other. There was something of a loving guardianship in the attitude of the elder, of confiding trust in that of the younger, as she leaned her head upon her sister's knee in pensive meditation.
"Sister, I must tell you of something; I know not that I did well or ill," and she lifted her face with a surety of sympathy.
"What is it, dear, what weighty matter troubles you now?"
The Chevalier looked up long enough to say:
"Have you torn your frock, or only quarreled again with the good Abbe over your task?" The girl very evidently had nothing to fear from his harshness.
"No! No! Don't tease; it's really important. This day at noon Madame Chartrain was in her chamber—you know the young man who came with M. Jerome?" de la Mora nodded.
"The same I ran into at the door?" and she flushed again at the memory of our discomfiture.
"Well, to-day noon at Madam Chartrain's I heard that danger threatened him concerning some papers or something which he has—and Madame du Maine, too, they mean him harm; and—and—well, I told him. Did I do ill, sister?"