Oswald and his cousin Georges were sitting at breakfast in their pleasant room in the Hotel Bristol by a window that looked out upon the Place Vendome, and down the brilliant Rue de la Paix, the perspective of which was lost in a hurly-burly of omnibuses, orange carts, flower wagons, advertising vehicles painted fiery red, fiacres, sun-illumined dust, and human beings rushing madly hither and thither. Whilst Georges was drinking his tea in sober comfort with a brief remark as to the incomparable excellence of the Paris butter, Oswald, who although endowed by nature with an excellent appetite had paid but scant attention to his meals of late, recounted for the tenth time to his cousin the extraordinary combination of circumstances which had brought together Gabrielle and himself. He was a victim of the lovers' delusion that sees in the most ordinary occurrences the finger of the Deity, and that regards their happiness as a special marvel wrought by Providence for their benefit.

It was, so Oswald narrated, in April, on the second day of the Auteuil races, the first faint tinge of green was perceptible on the landscape. He was on horseback, riding a magnificent Arabian steed which one of his friends had lent him, and which he was handling with the excessive care which an Austrian always bestows upon a horse that is not his own. Suddenly he saw walking across the race-course a young lady in a dark green dress; a ray of sunlight that turned her hair to gold attracted his attention to her. She walked quickly past with an elderly gentleman and Oswald turned to look after her. His horse was a little restless, his rider's spurs were rather too sharp; with the sudden movement he scratched the animal's silken skin, and instantly exclaimed, "Ah, pardon!" a piece of courtesy for which his companions ridiculed him loudly. In the meantime the young lady with the gray-haired gentleman had vanished.

"Who is that exquisitely beautiful girl?" he asked, and Wips Siegburg, secretary of the Austrian Legation, replied laughing, "Do you not know her, she is your cousin!"

"Gabrielle Truyn!" exclaimed Oswald; and Siegburg said sagely, "this comes of enjoying one's self too busily in Paris, and consequently finding no time to visit one's nearest relatives."

Oswald peered in every direction but he could not discover her again. After the race, under the leafless trees of the Champs Elysees rolled crowds of carriages, victorias, all sorts of coaches, four-in-hands, lumbering roomy omnibuses,--all veiled in the whirling, sunlit dust as in golden gauze, while everywhere, alike in the omnibuses and in the more elegant vehicles, reigned a uniform air of dull fatigue.

Paris had lost another battle with ennui.