I did not mean to trouble Mademoiselle; my business is with M.de Clericy.

I am applying for the post of secretary." She looked at me with a quick surprise, and her eyes lighted on my clothes with some significance, which made me think that perhaps Monsieur de Clericy gave less even than two hundred pounds a year to his amanuensis.
"Ah!" she said, with her thought apparent in her candid eyes.

"My father is at present in his study--engaged, I believe, with Monsieur Miste." "Miste ?" I echoed, for the name was no less peculiar than her way of pronouncing it.

She seemed to look for some sign that I knew this man.
"Yes--your predecessor." "Ah! a secretary--a man-machine that writes." She shook her head with a happy laugh, sinking, as it were, into an air of interest, which gave a sharp feeling that I had perhaps been forestalled in other matters by the man called Miste.

She looked at me with such candid eyes, however, that the thought seemed almost a sacrilege, offered gratuitously to innocence and trustfulness.