"Now, do you know what I am going to do with you, madame? I shall only
unfold my plans bit by bit, and watch your face to see if I have chosen
well. I am going to take you first to the Petit Trianon, and we are
going to walk leisurely through the rooms. I am not going to worry you
with much sight-seeing and tourists and lessons of history, but I want
you to glance at this setting of the life picture of poor Marie
Antoinette, because it is full of sentiment and it will make you
appreciate more the hameau and her playground afterwards. Something
tells me you would rather see these things than all the fine pictures
and salons of the stiff château."

"Oh yes," said Theodora; "you have guessed well this time."

"Then here we are, almost arrived," he said, presently.

They had been going very fast, and could see the square, white house in
front of them, and when they alighted at the gates she found the
guardian was an old friend of Lord Bracondale's, and they were left free
to wander alone in the rooms between the batches of tourists.

But every one knows the Petit Trianon, and can surmise how its beauties
appealed to Theodora.

"Oh, the poor, poor queen!" she said, with a sad ring in her expressive
voice, when they came to the large salon; "and she sat here and played
on her harpsichord--and I wonder if she and Fersen were ever alone--and
I wonder if she really loved him--"