Her new mistress, though scarcely at all her senior, was yet distinctly her mistress; she had that through her Fusilier blood; experience was just then beginning to show that the Fusilier Grandissime was a superb variety; she was a mistress one could wish to obey.

Palmyre loved her, and through her contact ceased, for a time, at least, to be the pet leopard she had been at the Cannes Brulees.
Honore went away to Paris only sixty days after Palmyre entered the house.

But even that was not soon enough.
"'Sieur Frowenfel'," said Aurora, in her recital, "Palmyre, she never tole me dad, _mais_ I am shoe, _shoe_ dad she fall in love wid Honore Grandissime.

'Sieur Frowenfel', I thing dad Honore Grandissime is one bad man, ent it?
Whad you thing, 'Sieur Frowenfel' ?" "I think, as I said to you the last time, that he is one of the best, as I know that he is one of the kindest and most enlightened gentlemen in the city," said the apothecary.
"Ah, 'Sieur Frowenfel'! ha, ha!" "That is my conviction." The lady went on with her story.
"Hanny'ow, I know she _con_tinue in love wid 'im all doze ten year' w'at 'e been gone.

She baig Mademoiselle Grandissime to wrad dad ledder to my papa to ass to kip her two years mo'." Here Aurora carefully omitted that episode which Doctor Keene had related to Frowenfeld,--her own marriage and removal to Fausse Riviere, the visit of her husband to the city, his unfortunate and finally fatal affair with Agricola, and the surrender of all her land and slaves to that successful duellist.
M.de Grapion, through all that, stood by his engagement concerning Palmyre; and, at the end of ten years, to his own astonishment, responded favorably to a letter from Honore's sister, irresistible for its goodness, good sense, and eloquent pleading, asking leave to detain Palmyre two years longer; but this response came only after the old master and his pretty, stricken Aurora had wept over it until they were weak and gentle,--and was not a response either, but only a silent consent.
Shortly before the return of Honore--and here it was that Aurora took up again the thread of her account--while his mother, long-widowed, reigned in the paternal mansion, with Agricola for her manager, Bras-Coupe appeared.