Does your father practice the art ?" "I have no father, no mother," she quickly said; "but good Papa Roussillon does like a little exercise with the colechemarde." "Well, I'm glad to hear it, I shall ask to teach him a trick or two," Beverley responded in the lightest mood.

"When will he return from the woods ?" "I can't tell you; he's very irregular in such matters," she said.
Then, with a smile half banter and half challenge, she added; "if you are really dying for some exercise, you shall not have to wait for him to come home, I assure you, Monsieur Beverley." "Oh, it's Monsieur de Ronville, perhaps, that you will offer up as a victim to my skill and address," he slyly returned; for he was suspecting that a love affair in some stage of progress lay between her and Rene.
She blushed violently, but quickly overcoming a combined rush of surprise and anger, added with an emphasis as charming as it was unexpected.
"I myself am, perhaps, swordsman enough to satisfy the impudence and vanity of Monsieur Beverley, Lieutenant in the American army." "Pardon me, Mademoiselle; forgive me, I beg of you," he exclaimed, earnestly modulating his voice to sincerest beseechment; "I really did not mean to be impudent, nor--" Her vivacity cleared with a merry laugh.
"No apologies, I command you," she interposed.

"We will have them after I have taught you a fencing lesson." From a shelf she drew down a pair of foils and presenting the hilts, bade him take his choice.
"There isn't any difference between them that I know of," she said, and then added archly; "but you will feel better at last, when all is over and the sting of defeat tingles through you, if you are conscious of having used every sensible precaution." He looked straight into her eyes, trying to catch what was in her mind, but there was a bewildering glamour playing across those gray, opal-tinted wells of mystery, from which he could draw only a mischievous smile-glint, direct, daring, irresistible.
"Well," he said, taking one of the foils, "what do you really mean?
Is it a challenge without room for honorable retreat ?" "The time for parley is past," she replied, "follow me to the battle-ground." She led the way to a pleasant little court in the rear of the cabin's yard, a space between two wings and a vine-covered trellis, beyond which lay a well kept vineyard and vegetable garden.

Here she turned about and faced him, poising her foil with a fine grace.
"Are you ready ?" she inquired.
He tried again to force a way into the depths of her eyes with his; but he might as well have attacked the sun; so he stood in a confusion of not very well defined feelings, undecided, hesitating, half expecting that there would be some laughable turn to end the affair.
"Are you afraid, Monsieur Beverley ?" she demanded after a short waiting in silence.
He laughed now and whipped the air with his foil.
"You certainly are not in earnest ?" he said interrogatively.

"Do you really mean that you want to fence with me ?" "If you think because I'm only a girl you can easily beat me, try it," she tauntingly replied making a level thrust toward his breast.
Quick as a flash he parried, and then a merry clinking and twinkling of steel blades kept time to their swift movements.