But Casimir, who laid great stress on his own diplomatic importance, vehemently repudiated such an assumption.
"Goblin, indeed!" he cried, indignantly. "It is a goblin that will be found to have body and bones, and blood too, I fear, unless I am much misinformed and mistaken. We have nothing to do with it of course, but I can tell you, madame, that we have information of the time, the locality, the numbers, the persons implicated. I believe if you put me to it, I could even furnish you with the names of the accused."
She bowed carelessly. "A few graziers, I suppose, and cattle-drivers," she observed, "with a Scottish house-*breaker, and a drunken squire or two for leaders. It is scarcely worth the trouble to ask any more questions."
"Far graver than that, madame," he answered, determined not to be put down. "Some of the best names in the north, as I am informed, are already compromised beyond power to retreat. I could tell them over from memory, but my tongue fails to pronounce the barbarous syllables. Would you like to have them in black and white?"
"Not this morning, monsieur," she answered with a shrug of the shoulders. "Do you think I came to London in order to mix myself up in an unsuccessful rebellion? I, who have private affairs of my own that require all my attention. You might as well suppose I had followed yourself across the Channel because I could not exist apart from Casimir de Chateau-Guerrand! Frankly, I am glad to see you too. Very glad," she added, stretching her white hand to the young man, with another of her bewitching smiles. "But I must hunt you away now. Positively I must; I ought to have sold an estate, and touched the purchase-money by this time. I am a thorough woman of business, monsieur, I would have you know; which does not prevent my loving amusement at the right season, like other people."
He took his hat to depart, feeling perhaps, for the first time, that there were women in the world to whom even he dare not aspire, and that it was provoking such should be the best worth winning. The Marquise had not yet lost the knack of playing a game from which she had never risen a
