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 question in a tone of childlike naïveté: "You don't like him?"

Ogle stared at her. "Pardon me," he said. "I'm not precisely in the habit of being laughed at, Madame Momoro."

Then she thrilled him, although she laughed; for she touched his hand lightly with the tips of her fingers, and said: "You are a dear!"

That was all;—the indefatigable pair, Macklyn and Jones, came up just then and ruined a beautiful moment for him. And to increase the coldness of his sentiments toward them, this was all they accomplished; because she departed at once to visit her friends, the elderly French ladies, in their cabin, where one of the sisters was still afflicted by an abscess of the ear. After that, as she explained, she must prove her devotion to Hyacinthe and allow him to read to her his report upon public education in America, which he was preparing for the French government.

This report of the young Hyacinthe may have been a compact one, or perhaps he had only written a little of it; for certainly the reading occupied no great length of time. Prowling uneasily about the boat-deck, not quite an hour later, the playwright heard a