yet older.  One or two were so handsome, under their noble silvery locks, that almost any woman—­Clotilde, for instance,—­would have thought, “No doubt that one, or that one, is the head of the house.”  Aurora approached the railing which shut in the silent toilers and directed her eyes to the farthest corner of the room.  There sat there at a large desk a thin, sickly-looking man with very sore eyes and two pairs of spectacles, plying a quill with a privileged loudness.

“H-h-m-m!” said she, very softly.

A young man laid down his rule and stepped to the rail with a silent bow.  His face showed a jaded look.  Night revelry, rather than care or years, had wrinkled it; but his bow was high-bred.

“Madame,”—­in an undertone.

“Monsieur, it is M. Grandissime whom I wish to see,” she said in French.

But the young man responded in English.

“You har one tenant, ent it?”

“Yes, seh.”

“Zen eet ees M. De Brahmin zat you ’ave to see.”

“No, seh; M. Grandissime.”

“M.  Grandissime nevva see one tenant.”

“I muz see M. Grandissime.”

Aurora lifted her veil and laid it up on her bonnet.

The clerk immediately crossed the floor to the distant desk.  The quill of the sore-eyed man scratched louder—­scratch, scratch—­as though it were trying to scratch under the door of Number 19 rue Bienville—­for a moment, and then ceased.  The clerk, with one hand behind him and one touching the desk, murmured a few words, to which the other, after glancing under his arm at Aurora, gave a short, low reply and resumed his pen.  The clerk returned, came through a gateway in the railing, led the way into a rich inner room, and turning with another courtly bow, handed her a cushioned armchair and retired.

“After eighteen years,” thought Aurora, as she found herself alone.  It had been eighteen years since any representative of the De Grapion line had met a Grandissime face to face, so far as she knew; even that representative was only her deceased husband, a mere connection by marriage.  How many years it was since her grandfather, Georges De Grapion, captain of dragoons, had had his fatal meeting with a Mandarin de Grandissime, she did not remember.  There, opposite her on the wall, was the portrait of a young man in a corslet who might have been M. Mandarin himself.  She felt the blood of her race growing warmer in her veins.  “Insolent tribe,” she said, without speaking, “we have no more men left to fight you; but now wait.  See what a woman can do.”

These thoughts ran through her mind as her eye passed from one object to another.  Something reminded her of Frowenfeld, and, with mingled defiance at her inherited enemies and amusement at the apothecary, she indulged in a quiet smile.  The smile was still there as her glance in its gradual sweep reached a small mirror.

She almost leaped from her seat.