Marie, happy in the visits of her lover and at the prospect of her approaching marriage, did her best to make the house cheerful.

Harry, who had not much liked her at first, now found her most pleasant and agreeable, and the younger girls walked in the grounds with their brothers and chatted when they were gathered in the evening just as Harry's sisters had done at home.

Jeanne was, if the group broke up, generally Harry's companion.

Ever since the affair of the mad dog she had treated him as her special friend, adopting all his opinions and falling in with any suggestion he might make with a readiness which caused Ernest one day to say laughingly to Harry: "One would think, Harry that you were Jeanne's elder brother, not I.She listens to you with a good deal more deference than she does to me." The winter came and went.

From time to time letters arrived from Paris, but the news was always in the same strain.