Set in Silver

								

where he's been governor or something. Not that his coming would matter
particularly if it weren't for complications, but there are several, the
most formidable of which is a Young Man.
The Young Man is a French young man, and his name is Honoré du Guesclin.
He is a lieutenant in the army (Ellaline mentioned the regiment with
pride, but I've forgotten it already, there was so much else to
remember), and she says he is descended from the great Du Guesclin. She
met him at Madame de Blanchemain's--you remember the Madame de
Blanchemain who was Ellaline's dead mother's most intimate friend, and
who lives at St. Cloud? Ellaline has spent all her holidays there ever
since I've known her; but though I thought she told me everything (she
always vowed she did), not a word did she ever breathe about a young man
having risen over her horizon. She says she didn't dare, because I'm so
"queer and prim about some things." I'm not, am I? But now she's driven
to confess, as she's in the most awful scrape, and doesn't know what
will become of her and "darling Honoré," unless I'll consent to help
them.
She met him only last Easter. He's a nephew of Madame de Blanchemain's,
it seems; and on coming back from foreign service in Algeria, or
somewhere, he dutifully paused to visit his relative. Of course it
occurs to me, did Madame de Blanchemain write and intimate that she
would have in the house a pretty little Anglo-French heiress, with no
inconvenient relatives, unless one counts the Dragon? But Ellaline says
Honoré's coming was quite a surprise to his aunt. Anyway, he proposed on
the third day, and Ellaline accepted him. It was by moonlight, in a
garden, so who can blame the poor child? I always thought if even a
moderately good-looking young man proposed to me by moonlight, in a
garden, I would say "Yes--yes!" at once, even if I changed my mind next
day.
But Honoré is very good looking (she has his picture in a locket, with
such a turned-up moustache--I mean Honoré, not the locket), and so
Ellaline didn't change her mind next day.
Not a word was said to Madame de Blanchemain (as far as Ellaline knows),
for they decided that, considering everything, they must keep their
secret, and eventually run away to be married; because Honoré is poor,
and Ellaline's an heiress guarded by a Dragon.
Well, through letters which E. has been receiving at a teashop where she
and the other older girls go, rigorously chaperoned, twice a week, it
was arranged to do the deed as soon as school should close; and if they
could have carried out their plan, Ellaline would have been Madame du
Guesclin before the Dragon could have appeared on the scene, breathing
fire and rattling his scales. They were going to Scotland to be married
(Honoré's idea), as a man can't legally marry a girl under age in France
without the consent of everybody concerned. Once she'd got away with
him, and had had any kind of hole-in-the-corner wedding, Honoré was of