He picked up the La Rochefoucauld.

“Yes, here is one, but this is an old edition.”  He turned to the title-leaf and read the date, then looked at the cover.  It is bound in brown leather and has the same arms and coronet upon it that my chatelaine has—­the arms of Ambrosine Eustasie de Calincourt and an “A.  E. de C.” entwined, all tooled in faded gold.

“The arms on my knife!” Antony said, pulling it from his waistcoat-pocket and comparing them.

“My knife,” I said.

“Tell me all about her—­A.E. de C.,” he commanded, seating himself on the sofa again.

“She was my great-great-grandmother, and was guillotined.  See—­I will show you her miniature,” and I took it from its case on the writing-table.  I have had a leather covering made to keep safe the old, paste frame.  It has doors that shut, and I don’t let her look too much at the mustard-yellow walls, my pretty ancestress.

“What an extraordinary likeness!” Antony exclaimed, as he looked at it.  “Are you sure I am not dreaming and you are not your own great-great-grandmother?”

“No, I am myself.  But I am supposed to be like her, though.”

“It is the very image of you.  She has your air and carriage of the head, and—­and—­” he looked at it very carefully under the electric light which sprouts from a twisted bunch of brass lilies on the wall, their stalks suggesting a modern Louis XV. nightmare.

“And what?”

“Well, never mind.  Now I want to hear her story.”  And we both sat down again for the third time on the tulip-sofa.

I told him the history just as I had told him the outline of my life the day in the Harley woods.  Only, as then I felt I was speaking of another person, now I seemed to be talking of myself when I came to the part of walking up the guillotine steps.

“And so they cut her head off—­poor little lady!” said Antony, when I had finished, and he looked straight into my eyes.

The pillow of art-needlework and frills had fallen to the floor—­even it could not remain comfortably on the hard seat!  There was nothing between us on the sofa.

Antony leaned forward, close to me.  His voice was strangely moved.

“Comtesse!” he began, when McGreggor knocked at the door.

“Mr. Gurrage is calling you, ma’am,” she said, in her heavy, Scotch voice, “and he seems in a hurry, ma’am.”

“Ambrosine!” echoed impatiently in the hall.

“Why, it must be dressing-time!” said Antony, calmly, looking at his watch.  “I must not keep you,” and he quietly left the room as Augustus burst in from my bedroom door.

“Where on earth have you been?” he said, crossly.  “That Dodd woman has been driving us all mad!  Willie Dodd came and joined us at bridge and took McCormack’s place, and the old she-tike came after him and chattered like a monkey until she got him away.  Where were you that you did not look after her?”