Chantemerle

CHAPTER XXIX
“LES VEILLÉES DU CHÂTEAU”

“Jasmin,” said the Vicomte, looking at his retainer in the glass, “does this remind you of the last time you shaved me? If so, please don’t cut me as you did then!”

For the old valet, who had at last succeeded in making his way from Paris, and had arrived the evening before, was now, with joy, tucking the towel round his master’s neck.

“Oh, M. Louis, don’t speak of it!” he implored.

“Well, I was even worse shaved in La Force, if that is any consolation to you,” returned Louis teasingly. “And now, just as you are going to begin, don’t you almost expect to hear a knock at the door?”

“Mon Dieu, I hope not!” said Jasmin with fervour, and ere the words were out the shaving brush fell from his hand. “Mary Virgin!” he exclaimed, for some one had knocked at the bedroom door—the quick, decisive knock of a person who desired to enter at once.

Louis burst out laughing, for, as a matter of fact, his keener ears had heard and recognised the step. “Come in, Father,” he cried. You have just given Jasmin a horrible fright.”

But the sight of the priest’s face and of the open letter in his hand had its effect on the Vicomte also. He jumped up, wrenching away his towel. “Gilbert!” he exclaimed. “Not bad news?”

“No, thank God, good—on the whole,” answered M. des Graves. “Read it.”

Louis drew a long breath of relief. “Well, that’s satisfactory as far as it goes,” he said, returning the letter. “Gilbert seems to be seeing life in Brittany. I wonder how he broke his leg. Imagine Monsieur le Marquis de Château-Foix climbing out of a window; for I suppose he was escaping, or something of the kind.”

“I believe,” said the Curé, smiling also, “that you wish you were ‘seeing life’ in Brittany too.”

“Not at all,” returned the Vicomte. “As a temporary country gentleman I am reaping a perfectly fresh harvest of experience here.” He suddenly dropped his bantering tone, and gripped the priest’s hands for a moment. “If you will go down, Father, I will be with you in a few minutes. Jasmin!” For Jasmin had discreetly vanished.

A broken leg is not commonly a source of satisfaction to the friends of the sufferer, but it is undeniable that Gilbert’s injury did appear in something of this light to M. des Graves and to Louis. So September drew to a close in less agitating circumstances. It was true that any day might still see soldiers coming up the avenue to hunt for the proscribed priest—for whom they had already searched the three months’ empty presbytère—that he had to remain closely hidden, that he was absolutely at the mercy of the denunciation of malice or the indiscretion of devotion. Above all, there was the danger that the authorities should see fit to instal a “constitutional” in the cure—a move which would inevitably have led to the detection of M. des Graves. But the supply of assermentés was fortunately running short, and Chantemerle, being a small village, was evidently to remain (theoretically) priestless. Louis, who really did serve in a measure as M. des Graves’ means of communication with his parish, was driven one day to suggest that he himself should seek orders from the constitutional Bishop of Luçon, and should settle at the presbytère. When Monseigneur de Mercy, the dispossessed prelate, came to his own again, he could declare the orders invalid, and the Vicomte could resume his status as a layman without prejudice.

Louis’ spirit of persiflage could not be imagined as wholly deserting him even in the article of death, but for some time now his gaiety had appeared to his companion to be a little flagging. The inaction was indeed fretting him horribly. He seemed to himself to have dropped out from the contest, he whose ardent royalism had already gone near to cost him his life. Gilbert and he appeared to have changed places; and what would he not give to join La Rouërie too! And when, at the end of August, came the news of Longwy, when, at the beginning of September, Verdun had opened its gates to Brunswick and the émigrés, he abandoned the attempt to conceal his impatience. The Princes and the exiles were once more on French soil, would soon be marching on Paris—and he was not with them. Again he accused himself of deserting his comrades, for D’Aubeville was in the invading ranks, the others still in the prisons whence he might have been helping to deliver them. . . . But that ideal at least could never have known realisation. Almost simultaneously with the news of Verdun came the tidings of the September massacres, a red flood which swept away De Périgny and all the rest with whom Louis had laughed and gamed and plotted. Jasmin, when he arrived, had furnished terrible details of gutters running ankle-deep in blood, of harpies dancing wild measures on the cart-loads of mutilated corpses. And in the smoke of Valmy, a little later, vanished the illusive hopes of the émigrés. That throw was played and lost. Yet to a man of Saint-Ermay’s temperament it was poor consolation to have staked nothing on it.

M. des Graves knew this, and sympathised with all his heart. And, as the monotonous days dragged on, he was touched, even to admiration, by the Vicomte’s unwearied good temper and courtesy towards himself. He gave him, in return, much of his time, and, having always tended to assume in the young man a side for which other people—including Louis himself—never gave him credit, he would often talk to him of subjects near his heart. Louis had a curious faculty of understanding.

But Louis himself had a subject not to be discussed with anybody. Never again, since that evening of fever and weakness, had he been tempted to speak of Lucienne to the priest. His secret and hers must remain inviolate. He thought of her constantly. She was dearer than ever now that the sea lay between them. He could see her in the English autumn; he could even see her in the future—the uncertain future—here at Chantemerle, its mistress, when he himself would be far away fighting under an alien flag. And in the past. . . . But to think of that was madness. He had held her in his arms and had let her go. The sting of the thought sent him out on the long lonely rides to which he was becoming more and more addicted—rides in which the peasants sometimes saw him galloping like one possessed, and which brought Saladin home in a state to horrify the stable-yard. For the old conflict had all to be fought out again between passion and honour, love and conscience, his duty and his desire.

And yet, though time and separation had fanned his love into a more ardent flame, would he have done differently if he had his chance again? He could not bring himself to say so. This seemed strange to him. He did not know that loss and sacrifice, besides intensifying, had purified the fire, and that the heavy price which he had paid to keep his shield in this one thing at least unstained, had come back to him in other ways.

Besides, it was not a purely abstract question. Nothing of the sort ever is. Sometimes Louis thought to himself that if he had the spirit of a man he would go over to England even now at the eleventh hour and claim her. What kept him back? Not, assuredly, the difficulty of getting out of the country. . . . No, it was the thought of Gilbert, of that undemonstrative and reliable kinsman, who held such odd social views, who was so lacking in geniality, who could be so actively unpleasant, whose high moral standard was quixotic and irritating, whom he heartily respected and for whose good opinion he was almost ashamed to find how much he cared. The discovery that he really loved his cousin Louis never consciously made.

M. des Graves, though he did not know the truth, saw quite well, in spite of Louis’ careful and elaborate defences, that he was engulfed in some mental turmoil. As the days went on the young man fell, despite himself, into long and most unusual silences. Were these things merely due to the enforced solitude of what Louis had himself termed his “retreat”? The priest did not think so.

One event only broke the monotony of the end of October. As Louis was standing one morning in the hall awaiting his horse, the Curé opened the library door and came out.

“Good-morning, my dear Louis,” he said. “I wanted to see you before you started, to tell you that, with your permission, I shall have a guest at dinner to-day.”

“I shall be delighted,” responded the young man, pulling on his gloves. “It is not, by any good chance, a lady—one of your parishioners, of course.”

“If you want to give a dinner-party a to the tenants’ wives,” replied M. des Graves imperturbably, “I do not see why you should deprive yourself of the pleasure. No, it is merely a priest who is coming to see me, and to whom I should be glad if you would extend your hospitality. He will be here this morning, and has come a long way—from Rome, in fact.”

Louis gave vent to a little whistle. “And is travelling about in France at this juncture? Rather a dangerous occupation. Bring him by all means. He will stay the night?”

M. des Graves replied that he was not sure, and Louis went down the steps to his impatient horse.

He rode far that morning, and had almost forgotten about the prospective guest, so that when he entered the dining-room he was surprised to see, standing by the window in converse with M. des Graves, a tall thin man in lay dress. Turning round, he revealed to Saint-Ermay’s view an emaciated face with a bird-like nose and tight, thin-lipped mouth.

“Louis,” said the Curé, “let me present you to Monsignor Giuseppe Cantagalli. Monsignore, M. le Vicomte de Saint-Ermay.”

The newcomer’s bow savoured as much of a court as Louis’ own. His peculiarly polished air was indeed the first thing to strike the young man as they sat at meat together; next, the resolution which lay coiled beneath it, like a spring of steel. The very way he carried his head, his neat, precise enunciation, were indications of it. Last of all the Vicomte noticed the extreme deference which he surprisingly paid to the Curé.

Monsignor Cantagalli did stay overnight, and at supper Louis got another impression of him. He had been talking easily and rather racily about the Curia, seeming to fling about great names in rather a careless fashion, but giving the listener no clue to the reason of his visit, which Louis, though he would have liked to know it, was much too well-bred to ask outright. The Pope’s patronage of the arts, his love of building, his munificence to the newly-founded Vatican museum next engaged his tongue, and it was plain that he himself appreciated to the full the advantages of living under a cultured Pontiff in an almost Renaissance Rome. Thence the talk had drifted on to the persecution of the Church in Vendée. Enquiring about the expatriated priests, Monsignor Cantagalli had been told the story of one, old and ill, who had been dragged, in a state unfit to travel, to Les Sables, and had there died from the effects of his journey.

Instead of showing pity or horror, the Italian broke into exclamations of envy. “Dio mio, how glorious! May I die the death of the righteous, and may my last end be like his!” he said, crossing himself. “And one has wondered whether there was a chance of martyrdom nowadays! Here in France you have it. How enormously favoured a country!”

Louis was tickled. “I think we might manage to do with a little less of the blessing in Vendée,” he observed. “But of course it is a good locality. Do you yearn to be a martyr, Monsignore? Personally I should prefer something a little more sensational than to die of overwalking myself.”

A veritable fire flashed in the priest’s eyes as he turned them on the flippant young man. Yet it was not the flame of indignation nor of reproof but of something else.

“It would be presumption, Monsieur,” was all he said; yet, as Louis remarked afterwards to M. des Graves, “he threw back his head as if he were already at the stake snuffing up the smoke.” The Vicomte added: “If the Monsignore makes a really determined effort to get martyred I think he has every chance of succeeding.” For Louis had not been greatly drawn to the visitor; and another cause of offence, though one which he naturally refrained from mentioning, was his suspicion that M. des Graves had taken advantage of the rare advent of a priest to be shriven, and for some reason the critic did not consider the newcomer worthy to confess a saint like M. des Graves.

One more surprise still Monsignor Cantagalli was to cause the young man before he departed. It was next morning, and Louis, after breakfasting in his room, had descended to the library. There was no one there, and it was not at once that he realised the presence of the two priests outside the open window, for he could not see them in the balcony. But suddenly he caught the words, “The Holy Father’s most express wish,” something in a very low voice from M. des Graves, and then the Monsignore’s clear, finished tones, with an additional ring of expostulation—“But, Eminence, surely—” And then they passed along the balcony out of hearing.

The Vicomte stood stupefied. He felt literally as though he were standing on his head. That title, which not long ago he himself had used in jest! No, it was impossible. His hearing had played him a trick. Granted that the Italian was an envoy charged with some message from the Curia—though that in itself seemed improbable—what he must have said was “His Eminence,” referring to some Cardinal or other of whom he had previously been speaking. But what a queer sensation the misapprehension had caused him, the listener!

He felt a delicacy, on this, of ever asking the priest why Monsignor Cantagalli had come to the château, and abstained from doing so. He had a secret; probably M. des Graves had his. And his own, with the arrival of another letter from Gilbert announcing his return in a week or two, began to press heavily on him again, so heavily that in the end, through no wish or knowledge of his own, it escaped his control.

It had been a long, dull day, during which depression had made inroads on Louis’ mind so noticeable that by the evening M. des Graves had found himself, most unusually, conducting almost a monologue, and at last the young man, on the plea of being tired, had betaken himself early to bed. The priest sat on by the fire reading. At eleven o’clock he rose to look for the second volume of his book, was unable to find it on the library shelves, and recollected that the Marquis had been reading it before he went to Paris. It was probably still in his room, and after a moment’s hesitation he lighted a candle and set forth in search of it. The few servants had gone to bed, and the wide staircase was black, ghostly, and silent as he ascended. He was still immersed in what he had been reading, as he gently opened the door of the Marquis’ empty room and entered.

But the room was not empty! There was a burnt-down fire on the hearth, a couple of candles on the table, and a coat and waistcoat flung upon a chair. For a moment M. des Graves was staggered, until he suddenly remembered having heard that the Vicomte was a temporary occupant of Gilbert’s apartment. Vexed at his intrusion he turned to go, hoping that he had not disturbed the sleeper, and speculating as to the incendiary possibilities of the two guttering candles. “I have a very good mind to blow them out,” he said to himself. “Louis will tell me that I am becoming an old maid, but it is really very careless of him. As he has not heard me he is obviously asleep and cannot need them.”

Having resolved on this precaution the priest advanced softly round the screen which cut off from his view the bed and a portion of the table. He did not get very far.

Louis was not in bed, nor was he asleep. He was sitting half dressed at the table, his face hidden in his arms, in an attitude whose significance there was no mistaking. . . . And as M. des Graves stood petrified he saw the young man’s shoulders move and his right hand tighten convulsively at the same instant round some unseen object which it held. The priest could not avoid knowing what it was, for between the fingers flowed the broad blue ribbon which commonly suspended on the wall the little miniature of Lucienne d’Aucourt.

CHAPTER XXX
FEARS, HOPES, AND MYSTIFICATION OF M. DES GRAVES

If Louis slept soundly during the remainder of that night M. des Graves did not. He went down slowly to the library, and sat there a long time by the dying fire, stunned. Louis in love with Gilbert’s affianced wife! But that was only a part of the calamity. Had it stopped there the priest might merely have pitied him, the victim of a hopeless passion which he had tried to conceal. But the case did not stand thus; there was more behind. All that sensation of tension which had afflicted the observer at the return of the cousins from Paris was explained now, and explained in the most disastrous manner conceivable. For Gilbert knew something, and therefore there must be something to know. What was it? That Lucienne was deceiving him? Ah no! God grant that it was not that! Yet what of the look which he had surprised on the Marquis’ face that evening when he had spoken to him of Lucienne—a look which had haunted him ever since? And that mysterious weight on Louis’ mind, of which, the same evening, he had so nearly unburdened himself—his fits of depression now. . . . Alas, it was all too clear. . . . Yet he could not believe that the Vicomte had acted treacherously. He was in love with Lucienne, granted; it was a misfortune, but that was all. Back came the other argument; if that were all, how explain Gilbert’s behaviour, Louis’ own dejection? It all came round to the same heartbreaking inference. . . .

Between these two verdicts the priest was tossed all the next few days. He began almost to dread Gilbert’s return; he found himself for ever gazing at Louis, wondering, hoping, saying to himself that the boy whom he had loved, whom he had brought up, with whom he had always been on such terms of semi-intimacy, could not have done such a thing. But he was always faced by the same conclusion, till at last it became too painful to be much in the Vicomte’s society, and, feigning stress of occupation, M. des Graves withdrew more and more into solitude and the library, because he had not the heart to sit or walk with the young man and think such things of him. But Louis, absorbed by the mounting tide of his passion, and dispirited by the conflicts into which it threw him, noticed nothing. Once or twice indeed it occurred to him that he was seeing very little of M. des Graves, and that the dullness was becoming intolerable. He really longed for Gilbert’s return.

Late one afternoon in November he came riding slowly up the avenue. Under Saladin’s hoofs the ground, covered with dead and rotting leaves, plashed soddenly; chill drops descended at intervals from the half-naked boughs on horse and rider, and the Vicomte, usually a particularly gallant figure in the saddle, had visible dejection in his air, as he went up under the elms. Instead of summoning a groom to take his horse or riding round to the stables he dismounted at the steps, flung the reins on Saladin’s neck, and, slapping him on the flank, left him to find his own way to his quarters, while he went to look in upon M. des Graves. Perhaps the Curé would not now be too busy to speak to him, as he had been all morning.

The library was sufficiently lit by the firelight to show him that the priest was not there, but the fancy coming upon him to sit down and wait a few minutes for him he advanced towards the fire—and suddenly stood motionless. The glow had revealed to him the top of a familiar black head resting against the back of one of the arm-chairs.

“Good God!” he said softly. “Is it possible?”

It was. In a second Louis was round the chair, bending over it, shaking its half-dozing occupant. “Is it really you?” he cried, dropping to his knees beside him.

The Marquis opened his eyes. “Yes,” he said, with his usual composure; “it is I. I have been back an hour or more.”

Louis, kneeling there, embraced him. “Ma foi, but I am glad to see you! I can hardly believe you are here! And you have not got a crutch, or a wooden leg?”

For answer Château-Foix got to his feet. “No, I am perfectly sound. And you, Louis?”

He suddenly put both hands on his cousin’s shoulders, and, holding him at arm’s length in the firelight, gave him a long, intense scrutiny.

“Oh, I am all right,” responded the Vicomte easily. “It is you who are the more recent invalid now. Let us have a little more light on you.” He freed himself and went to the mantel-piece for a couple of candles, while the Marquis dropped back into his chair.

“To think of your coming in upon us in this undramatic fashion,” remarked Saint-Ermay, a candlestick in either hand. “I should have liked to organise a triumphal reception for you, mon cher.”

“M. des Graves tells me,” responded Château-Foix, again looking at him very keenly, “that you are a great hand at organisation—that you have got the whole village under your thumb.”

Louis lit the candles. “It is very lamentable,” he said deliberately, “to what an extent holy men will give way to exaggeration. All this is because I said I’d be shot if I’d have the entire population trooping up here every morning to Mass. Come now, my dear Gilbert, let me hear all about your wanderings. You owe us a very detailed account to make up for all the anxiety you have given us.” He sat himself down on the arm of his cousin’s chair.

“You must wait till M. des Graves comes back,” said the Marquis quietly. “I was just beginning to tell him when he was called away, about twenty minutes ago.”

“What a nuisance,” observed Louis. “Well, tell me at least how you broke your leg. Were you climbing out of the window with a regiment of Blues after you? I had a vivid picture of your doing so.”

“No, it was nothing so romantic. I got kicked by a horse.”

“But that might have happened to you at home!” exclaimed the Vicomte in tones of profound disappointment. . . . “Father, he was not escaping by the window!” For the door had opened, and M. des Graves was standing there looking at them. And a few minutes later, with the priest in his accustomed chair, and Louis, still booted and spurred, leaning against the hearth, the returned traveller began his promised recital.

“The whole thing was the merest chance. After I had seen off my mother I happened to go into a certain eating-house in Nantes, and sat down at a table alone. Behind me were two men—not peasants—talking Breton, which, as you know, I do not understand. But in the midst of their conversation, to which I was paying no attention, came suddenly, several times repeated, the words ‘Monsieur Milet.’ And instantly I found myself devoured by curiosity to know what these men were saying about La Rouërie—supposing, indeed, that they were speaking of him. I waited a little, and then in a pause of their conversation I leant over to them and said: ‘Gentlemen, I do not understand Breton, so that I have not been eavesdropping on you, but I could not help overhearing a name which you mentioned. I once had an acquaintance of that name—a Monsieur Milet.’

“They looked at me in a curious manner, and one of them—he was quite a young man, and, now I saw him closer, a gentleman—said: ‘It is not an uncommon name, sir. Of what profession was this friend of yours?’

“I hesitated for a moment, and then, remembering how La Rouërie had described himself to me, I said: ‘A merchant of Bordeaux.’”

“Tableau!” exclaimed Louis.

“Not at all. On the contrary, we fenced for fully five minutes, I afraid alike of compromising M. de la Rouërie and myself. For all I knew they might be police spies, and I suppose that they had the same conjecture about me. Well, in the end we satisfied each other most fully. They were confidential agents of the Marquis reconnoitring in Nantes—a pretty perilous business—and were just about to return to the interior. As they saluted me and left the ordinary I had an overmastering desire to send a message to La Rouërie. I cursed myself for having let slip the opportunity, paid my score and hurried after them. I found them standing at a corner, talking and looking back, and as I came up it was evident to me that I was the person they were waiting for.

“‘Messieurs,’ said I, ‘would it be imposing too much on your kindness if I asked you to take a message from me to Monsieur Milet?’

“To this they answered that if I would go with them to their lodgings they would do better, if I liked. I was perfectly convinced of their good faith, and (I confess it was foolish of me) it occurred to me that they possibly meant that La Rouërie himself was in hiding there, and I wanted very much to see him again, so I accompanied them.”

“Do you know,” commented the Vicomte, “that for a rather particularly prudent person you have the most extraordinary lapses from sagacity?”

A smile glimmered round Gilbert’s mouth. “I went in with them,” he pursued. “There was, of course, no La Rouërie there—but directly the door was shut the younger man took my hand and said: ‘I remember now the Marquis speaking to me of a Vendean noble whom he met recently near Laval. Are you not he?’ I said that I was. ‘Then,’ said he, ‘if I know Armand de la Rouërie, he would give a thousand pounds to meet you again.’ I believe I replied that I would do the same. Well, to cut a long story short, I arranged to go with them (as it would be a matter of a few days only) to see La Rouërie, who was supposed to be still at Launay-Villiers.”

“And he was not?” asked the priest.

“No. Nor was he at Mauron, whither we went afterwards. Finally, after a fortnight’s travelling and adventures, with which I will not bore you, we ran him to earth right in North Brittany, near Lamballe.”

“And then?”

“Then, after I had seen him and talked with him, I found it was not so easy to get back as it had been to get there. The Blues were hunting vigorously for him; he had constantly to change his hiding-place and I was forced to go with him. Nor could I send a message to you. So it happened that I was with him when the news came of Valmy, with all that it meant to his plans. Calonne’s letter was the final blow.”

“Calonne’s letter?” enquired Louis.

“The minister wrote bidding him defer action till March. That was really the end of everything. The confederates dispersed, and I, too, could delay no longer. I started homewards. Then came my accident. I was nursed at the manoir where it happened, in the family of an old gentleman, a M. de Saint-Gervais, who had just been sheltering La Rouërie himself. That was why I dared not give you the name. As soon as I was fit to travel I started again—and here I am.”

“Then where is La Rouërie now?” asked both his hearers in a breath.

“Somewhere in the heart of Brittany. He absolutely refused to seek safety in Jersey. I understand that he left the château of La Fosse-Hingant, near Saint Malo, at the beginning of October. If Chalons had fallen he and his Bretons would be in Paris now; perhaps the King would be back at the Tuileries.”

Gilbert spoke with a fire new to him, and the priest looked at him in a contemplative silence. Yet the recital, whose beginning had been full of promising description, had disappointingly tailed off when it came to the real issue. Both men were conscious of this, but Louis’ attempts to extract more particulars met with small success.

“Then what,” asked the Curé at last, “do you consider to be the result of your journey?”

“To be frank,” replied the Marquis, “nothing at all.”

But the priest did not believe him.

He was more mystified than ever. He had re-entered the room that evening—he had paused at the door with a prayer on his lips—strung up to a most uncomfortable pitch of expectation, prepared to see he knew not what menacing interview going forward within. Instead of that he had beheld Louis, his depression banished, sitting laughing on the arm of his cousin’s chair, in amiable converse with the kinsman whom he had (perhaps) deeply wronged, and who (perhaps) knew it. It was more than M. des Graves could fathom. Must he accuse Louis of being, besides a traitor, the most consummate of hypocrites? No; the most finished acting in the world could not simulate so well. He was pleased to see the Marquis back; his spirits were genuine. And Gilbert . . . what of his past bearing? M. des Graves knew the Marquis’ power of concealing his feelings, his reserve, his mastery of himself; but he did not credit him with adding to these gifts that of pretending to an emotion which he did not feel. Therefore the ease which he displayed in Louis’ presence must be real. What had happened to him? Did he know nothing, after all? Or—blessed supposition—was there nothing to know?

Of one thing, however, the priest went to bed that night convinced. Though he could not yet define or measure it, Gilbert had suffered some moral transformation during his absence. Next day, however, its nature was made clearer to him, in the course of a long conversation—a talk more intimate indeed than they often enjoyed—wherein Château-Foix frankly admitted some change in himself. Contact with facts had at last shattered the Liberal ideals which he had so carefully cherished. La Rouërie’s influence possibly counted for something in the process of iconoclasm. At any rate, M. des Graves was struck with the attraction which the Breton had exercised upon him; for in this interview, perhaps because Louis was not present, Gilbert was much more prodigal of details about their intercourse.

And it was scarcely a surprise to M. des Graves to find that Gilbert had brought back from Brittany, besides the increased zeal and energy for which he could not altogether account, a perfectly formulated desire of emulating, in some measure at least, the work which La Rouërie had done in that province. For several days the two discussed this possibility in all its bearings, before Gilbert, once so opposed to the mere idea, would yield to the priest’s conviction that to set on foot throughout Vendée a Royalist organisation analogous to that of Brittany was not yet desirable and would only court disaster.

Moreover, Château-Foix had changed in other ways—or so it seemed. A day or two after his return a recrudescence of the search for hidden priests had led both Gilbert and M. des Graves to the conclusion that prudence demanded the suppression, during the day, of any sign that the little chapel at the château was still used for worship. It had therefore been dismantled one morning after Mass, and later in the day the Curé took Gilbert to look at it.

Everything was gone—the houselling-cloth from the rails, the peasants’ little votive candles from the shrine of the Madonna, the holy water from the stoup at the door; and the altar itself, stripped of everything, even of its crucifix, stood deserted and lightless against the bare wall.

“Jerusalem is indeed made an heap of stones,” said M. des Graves sadly, looking at the empty tabernacle. “This is the first day for half a century at least that you have been without the presence of the Blessed Sacrament here.”

The Marquis said nothing, but when they got outside he began suddenly: “I saw a thing in Brittany which struck me very much. When I was at Mauron there was a riot in the church, in which several lives were lost. In the midst of the turmoil a man, a young man—I learnt afterwards that he was a noble—sprang up the altar steps and stood with drawn sword in front of the tabernacle. It was a fearfully conspicuous position, and he was shot down by a soldier from the end of the church. The instant that he fell a peasant took his place, snatching the sword from his hand. I think it was the finest thing I have ever seen.”

“I agree with you,” said the priest, his face shining. “Yet your own countrymen might show you a devotion as lofty. Do you remember the sublime retort of the dying peasant in the troubles at Saint Christophe eighteen months ago, when the soldier shouted to him, ‘Rends-toi!’ ‘Rends-moi mon Dieu!’”

“Yes, I heard of it,” said the Marquis, and fell silent.

M. des Graves went to his room. He had by now given up trying to penetrate the mystery of Gilbert’s relations with Louis. It was evident that in Château-Foix’ mind there was no room at once for the resentment which the priest had feared and the new interests and enthusiasms whose presence he welcomed with ever-increasing surprise. The Marquis seemed a different man—a man who was at last perhaps in a fair way to be able to use his own dormant qualities.

And then . . . was this the prelude to a still greater change? The priest flung himself down before his prie-dieu. Oh, if what Gilbert had said this morning only meant that his eyes were opening at last to the greatest motive power of human life, he would not grudge these years of anguish in which he had been forced to watch the dying, as it seemed, of early faith and early enthusiasms in the man whom he had loved more than a son. He would not grudge his own retirement during these long twenty years, his voluntary serving of a simple and credulous people, the despair which had threatened sometimes to overwhelm him. He would be a thousand-fold repaid.

But gradually, as the weeks wore on to Christmas, the priest’s hope in this respect died out. Yet his conviction of a change in Gilbert had become certainty. The Marquis’ moderation was gone; he was filled with a restless zeal for a cause on which, before his journey to Paris, he had looked almost as a spectator. Not Louis himself was more enraged at the imprisonment of the Royal Family, more horror-struck at the King’s trial. At last the supreme shock of the 21st of January hurried matters to a crisis.

Gilbert would not lay a finger on his own tenantry; it was not a time, had it been possible, to collect powder or arms, but he must try, if not to establish, at least to discover some accord among such of the neighbouring gentry as had not emigrated. There were, for instance, Gabriel Baudry d’Asson still in hiding at Brachain, Grelier de Concize at La Chapelle-Themer, M. de Verteuil, the three De Béjarry brothers. . . . All this, stern, resolute, and eager, he propounded one snowy evening at the end of January in the library to M. des Graves and to Louis, who, white as a sheet in his deep mourning, sat at the end of the table with his chin in his hand and stared at him, for once deprived of speech by the catastrophe. Before them lay a printed sheet, which began by stating that the Directory of the department had considered “that the death of a tyrant might lead the slaves who served him to excesses likely to disturb the public peace. . . .” It was the latest proclamation against priests and émigrés, the King’s execution having, ironically enough, stirred up the authorities at Fontenay to fresh activity against those who were most crushed by it.

So, in the hush of horror that lay heavy on them all, Gilbert, with the example and the precept of La Rouërie before him, began to make plans. But the apathy of the countryside was remarkable. He could see quite well from the attitude of his own tenantry that the King’s death, instead of stirring them to action, had numbed them. And with them he held his hand. The idea of influencing ignorant peasantry, of pushing them like sheep into they knew not what, was intensely repugnant to him. If they themselves moved, well and good. Louis, who had no such quixotic scruples, was made to give his word that he would say nothing to incite them. Therefore anything that Château-Foix could accomplish must be done amongst men of his own class, and of these there were not many remaining. He entered into correspondence with a few; he thought, he planned, but the day of action seemed after all a long way off.

Suddenly the promise of it sprang into much nearer view. Lulled by the quiet reigning in the department, the authorities had not thought it necessary to replace the troops of the line, which had been drawn off during the previous summer. Now, at the beginning of February, it occurred to them to reorganise the National Guard on a more solid basis, and they issued a decree to that not very unreasonable effect. Commissioners were to be sent into every canton, and all persons capable of bearing arms were to be enrolled, if necessary by force.

And at once it was made clear to the misguided Directory how deceptive was the apathy on which they had relied. The commissioners met almost everywhere with the most lively opposition, which sometimes ended in actual affray. Even the village of Chantemerle was in a ferment, and the peasants at first refused absolutely to send their contingent to Chantonnay. But the thought that, if they did not, the commissioners would presently descend upon them, finally decided them, very grudgingly, to do as they were required. Gilbert had advised them to this course. It did not seem to him, nor to M. des Graves, that the crisis had come, but . . . was it coming?

CHAPTER XXXI
WAX FLOWERS

“Poor Caroline!” said the Marquise, looking up at the portrait of her sister. “How she must have suffered!”

Lucienne, taken by surprise, very nearly ejaculated, “Why?” for, as far as she had been able to gather, Lady Ashley’s English life had been extremely happy. But, feeling that silence was more sympathetic, she said nothing.

“And yet,” pursued Madame de Château-Foix, “her exile was voluntary, whereas ours——” She flung out her hands expressively.

“Perhaps,” hazarded Lucienne, “we shall be able to go back sooner than we expect. Or perhaps . . . Gilbert will come here before very long.”

The Marquise shook her head. “Neither is at all probable. And really, if I continue to suffer from my digestion as I am doing at present, I doubt if he would recognise me should he come. I am getting positively haggard.” And she then spoke, with the candour permitted by her nation, of her stomach, and of the state to which English food and the methods of its preparation were reducing it. Under her handling the subject seemed as tragic as that of separation and exile—and perhaps it really was so.

But the not very refined cuisine of Ashley Court was the only feature in its hospitality open to criticism. The family had proved the kindest and most thoughtful of hosts. Amelia’s tact prevented the Marquise from feeling, as she might have done, the delicacy of her position in a household ruled by her young unmarried niece. Sir William kept open house, and all through the autumn, what with shooting parties, guests staying at the Court—of whom Madame Gaumont had been one—and occasional visits of ceremony from other émigrés in the neighbourhood, dullness was successfully held at bay. And though with George Lucienne never attained any degree of intimacy, with Amelia she soon became fast friends. One bond which drew her to Miss Ashley was the fact that the English girl had known both Gilbert and Louis. Not that Lucienne wished to be always talking about the former, like Madame de Château-Foix, who was only really happy, so Amelia surmised, when speaking of her son. Indeed it had struck Amelia on one or two occasions that Lucienne might have displayed more interest than she did in some recital of her future mother-in-law’s. It never occurred to Miss Ashley that there was one person conversation about whom never failed to interest Mademoiselle d’Aucourt. But then there was never in the nature of things a great deal of talk about Louis de Saint-Ermay, who was merely a connection of the household. Lucienne, however, soon contrived that there should be more.

“And what did Louis do when he was over here?” she would ask, as she and Amelia walked alone about the lanes—a freedom so strange to the French girl—or sat in each other’s rooms at bedtime.

“Oh, he amused himself; he wore a different costume every day and rode about with George and Cousin Gilbert; he—— Really I can’t remember,” the unsuspecting Amelia would reply. “I was only sixteen, you know. I chiefly recollect how gay and amusing he was, and how good-looking. I believe I was rather in love with him.” Amelia’s own heart could best tell her why she soiled her lips with that last gratuitous lie.

Yet if Lucienne had tried she would have found that Gilbert’s doings were much better stored in Miss Ashley’s memory. But she never made the experiment. Instead, she would relate to Amelia, with all the carelessness of which she was mistress, anecdotic fragments relating to the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay. Had Amelia ever heard that he was considered the handsomest young man in the bodyguard; that when he was a boy in the royal pages the Queen had specially noticed him; that he had fought three duels before he was one-and-twenty; that for a wager he had once swum the whole length of the Grand Canal at Versailles, an exploit which had procured him a fortnight’s arrest? And sometimes, in return Amelia would repay herself for listening to these reminiscences by drawing out of Lucienne, half against her own will, details about Gilbert’s daily life—as far as Lucienne knew them.

Thus the autumn went by and winter approached, a season chiefly welcomed, so it seemed to the two émigrées, because it was that of the pursuit of the fox. The neighbouring squires who had shot Sir William’s coverts now pranced jovially round the house on their steeds, or consumed enormous quantities of cold beef and ale within its precincts, for Sir William was master of the local pack. Amelia’s betrothed, Mr Philip Harbenden, was his deputy, and it was from the conversation of these two gentlemen that the French ladies were able to rate at its true importance the national sport of their adoptive country.

A rider who often discovered that his way home after a run led him past the Court, a gentleman who found that the well-being of the kennels called for frequent visits of inspection—Mr Harry Trenchard—had carried on since the summer a very agreeable friendship with Mademoiselle d’Aucourt. It is true that at first she had not seemed to understand what he wanted, but, by the exercise of unsuspected tact and perseverance, he had gained her over to a considerable measure of it. Amelia was amused at his attentions, and indeed the two girls were apt to laugh a little over him. But in an odd way Lucienne was grateful to him for his frequent visits. He was another person to whom she could, if she wished, talk of Louis—though any possibility of his giving her the smallest detail of fresh information on that topic had long ago been exhausted. She found him more amusing than Mr Harbenden (who was, besides, occupied with Amelia), more sensible than Sir Francis Stansfield (a youth who, obviously smitten with her charms, was precluded from an intelligible expression of his sentiments by his lack of French and by a fashionable jargon of his own which Lucienne could not understand), less paternal than that distinguished traveller, agriculturist, and near neighbour, Mr Arthur Young of Bradfield Hall, who paid her rather charming compliments in her own tongue. George Ashley she placed in a category apart. She did not understand him, while aware, every time that she encountered his quiet, observant gaze, that he probably understood her only too well.

And Lucienne’s instinct was not at fault. The critical George was classifying his cousin’s betrothed, not, however, without error. In the summer he had not made up his mind; in the autumn he had ranked her as a flirt; during the winter he took back this accusation and was somewhat at a loss. It was plain to him that Lucienne did not care a pin for any of the young men with whom she seemed to enjoy laughing and jesting, and this not because she was heartless—rather the contrary. It seemed to George that she was using their admiration and their friendship as temporary distractions. Somebody had her heart; how else account for the fits of dejection and silence which had been gradually creeping upon her through the autumn? Well, of course, she was affianced yet separated indefinitely from her betrothed. It was quite natural to set down these accesses of depression to regret for him. Sir William did so, sometimes rallying his “niece” openly on the subject; Madame de Château-Foix probably took them as not improper tributes to her son’s attractions. Amelia’s opinion George had never asked, for, except as a student of human nature, he was not interested in Lucienne, and had no desire indirectly to learn her secret. But it seemed to him that there was more than the pain of parted love in her eyes; it appeared more like unhappy love. That look alone, surprised once or twice by him when she was off her guard, obtained for Lucienne her release from the class to which she had been assigned, and caused the young man to regard her with a more lively attention than he himself quite realised.

Had he known, Lucienne’s heartache was at once a simple and a complex suffering. It was simple, even commonplace, in that it arose from the fact that she was in love with a man whom she could not marry. But it was complicated by several other anguishes, such as the knowledge that she was deceiving the betrothed whom, had there not been that other, she fancied she could have loved so well, whom as it was she trusted and admired, and with whom, after his return from Brittany, she kept up a regular correspondence. Then there was the constant companionship with his mother, to whom also she was obliged to show a deceitful bearing, and who would always be talking of him, especially during that time of anxiety when they knew him to be in danger in Brittany. Last and sharpest of all, there was the wild, agonising regret and shame for her own conduct in that scene of farewell with Louis, for having at that supreme moment irretrievably cheapened herself in his eyes, so that, in all probability, she had slain his love for her—a passion which she had not enough altruism to wish dead. For Lucienne had gradually been building her lover a pedestal, whose base was his withstanding of her pleading in that hour. Since Saint Lucian’s Day their parts had been reversed, and it was Louis, not she, who stood for honour now. What must he have thought of her even at the time . . . and afterwards! So she tortured herself into thinking the absence of any letter or message from him a proof that he no longer cared for her—forgetting that the elevated rôle she had assigned him would have precluded him from writing in any case. And the more she exalted him and conceived him now cold to her, the more did her passion increase, so that he was always the one stable thought in her mind, the one figure always before her eyes—except when the presence of strangers distracted her. And the thought of Louis, barbed with this humiliating remorse, having become a veritable torture to her, she ended by craving for this distraction and welcoming it, when it came, with all her heart.

Meanwhile Christmas approached, with its promise of festivities, and the neighbourhood was not more astonished than was Miss Trenchard when Mr Harry Trenchard announced his intention of giving a ball on Christmas Eve. A bachelor, he had never before thus entered the lists. Miss Trenchard was not exactly displeased; the embers of ancient gaiety still smouldered in her respectable breast, and she thought it not unbecoming that Henry should exhibit the resources of his mansion to the public. But all her questions, discreet or indiscreet, failed to wrest from her nephew the motive of his sudden outburst of hospitality. At Ashley Court that motive was guessed at, though not formulated in speech.

It was already the 23rd of December, and an afternoon so dark that Amelia had abandoned her needlework, and, obedient to Lucienne’s request that lamps should not yet be called for, was sitting with her hands in her lap, a posture which had been her companion’s for some time.

“I wonder what they are doing just at this moment at Chantemerle,” came meditatively from Mademoiselle d’Aucourt through the firelit dusk.

“Do you know, Lucy,” said Amelia, “I was just wondering the same thing. Poor Cousin Gilbert is not, I fear, preparing as we are for festivities.”

“I had a letter from him two or three days ago,” remarked Lucienne rather listlessly. “There was not much news in it. He says that he does not know what is going to happen.”

“He is not alone there, is he?” enquired Amelia. “M. de Saint-Ermay is with him?”

“Yes,” answered Lucienne in a hard little voice. “At least I suppose so.” She bit her lips at the remembrance of how she had hastened through the letter for the mere mention of Louis’ name, and had found none. “And then there is always M. des Graves.”

“Ah, yes,” returned the English girl, “I am always meaning to ask you about M. des Graves, when I hear you and Aunt Felicity talking about him. What is he like?”

Lucienne sat up in her chair. “He is the best person in the world. He understands everybody. You can guess that when you know how fond two such different people as Gilbert and Louis are of him. And I too love him,” she added warmly.

“Whom does Miss Lucy love?” enquired a hearty a voice at the door. “I hope she was declaring her passion for her old uncle, but I am afraid it is improbable.”

“It was for some one older than you, mon oncle,” retorted Lucienne, as three male forms advanced into the twilight.

“Is that Mr Trenchard?” asked Amelia, getting up from her chair.

“It is,” replied that gentleman, bowing, while Sir William cried: “Why the deuce you girls sit in the dark like this I can’t conceive!”

“Well, you might guess why, papa, from what you overheard,” returned his daughter. “But now that you are here I will ring for lights.”

“Mr Trenchard has come,” announced the Squire, when the lamps were brought, “to ask you ladies a question. I don’t know what it is, except that it is vastly important. Is it a secret, Trenchard?”

“Not at all,” responded the young man. “I merely wished to enquire of Miss Ashley and Mademoiselle d’Aucourt the colour of the respective gowns with which they intend to dazzle our eyes to-morrow night, and whether——”

“Oh, by Gad!” interrupted Sir William, “to remain is indiscreet. Secrets of the toilet! I’m off. Come, George.”

“No,” said his son. “I am going to stay,” and he sauntered to a chair and sat down.

“Papa, do be quiet!” urged Amelia. “Do let us all be seated, and Mr Trenchard can deliver himself of his message in comfort.”

“I do not think,” put in George Ashley, unmoved, “that Trenchard has any business to ask that question. I stayed on purpose to remonstrate, and I suggest that it be not answered.”

“Wait till you hear why I asked it,” retorted the master of Dewlands. “Ladies, I was going very humbly to beg your permission to present you to-morrow with a few flowers, if there were any prospect of your honouring me by wearing them. And so the colours you would prefer . . .”

Amelia rose and swept him a curtsy. “You have the most charming ideas, sir! We are immensely obliged to you, Lucienne and I.”

“You will really condescend to wear them? Then what may I offer you?”

“Present Amelia with a nosegay of holly,” suggested her brother. “I can conceive its becoming her well.”

“But not my dress, thank you,” responded Miss Ashley. “Let us be serious, for this is a serious question.”

Trenchard went and bent over Lucienne. “And you, Mademoiselle?” he asked in a lower tone.

“I shall wear lilac, Monsieur,” answered the girl softly. “I am still in half-mourning for my mother, you know. If I were at home I should not perhaps be going to a ball. But here Madame permits me to go.”

“Indeed, I should hope so,” murmured the Englishman to himself. “Then, Mademoiselle, would you permit me to offer you a few violets?”

“Ah, no, Monsieur!” said Lucienne suddenly; “not violets!”

“You dislike violets?”

“I would rather not wear them,” said Lucienne.

“What, Lucy?” exclaimed Sir William, overhearing, where he stood leaning against the harpsichord, his hands in his pockets. “You dislike the violet—the modest violet, the flower so suitable to a young girl! Fie!”

“Oh no!” said Lucienne, confused. “I never said that I disliked them. I . . . I would rather not . . . I mean, if Mr Trenchard were so kind as to offer me anything else.”

“Aha!” exclaimed her host, chuckling. “Now I see the reason!” And approaching Lucienne he bent down and observed in a tone perfectly audible to the whole assembly: “A little sentimental reason connected with Gilbert, is it not, my dear? Quite right—quite right and proper!”

Lucienne flushed crimson, and precisely at that moment the Marquise entered the room.

“Amelia——” she began. “Oh, I beg your pardon! I did not know that you had visitors.”

“It is only Mr Trenchard, aunt,” said Amelia quickly, and George placed a chair for Madame de Château-Foix, with whose entrance a slight constraint appeared to have fallen upon the company. Sir William endeavoured to dissipate this by informing his sister-in-law of the object of Trenchard’s visit.

“Indeed!” said the Marquise, elevating her beautifully pencilled eyebrows, and looking at Trenchard where he stood by Lucienne. “Monsieur is really too kind.”

“But Lucy,” pursued Sir William, unheeding, “don’t want to wear violets.”

“Indeed, I should hope not!” exclaimed Madame de Château-Foix, with so much of meaning in her voice that Sir William was suddenly stricken silent.

“Perhaps, Madame,” said Trenchard with that boldness which cloaks timidity, “you would give us your assistance in the choice of suitable flowers.”

“I am afraid, Monsieur,” returned the elder lady with growing coldness, “that I cannot be of service in the matter. I do not consider it good taste to wear flowers of any description while in mourning—even in half-mourning—for a near relative.”

Lucienne looked down, and no one said anything.

“For myself,” pursued the Marquise, evidently gratified with the effect which she was producing, “I have never worn them since the death of my husband—except at my son’s request, on the occasion of his annual banquet to his tenants. And even then,” she added with increased dignity, “the flowers were not real.”

“Dear me, what were they, then?” enquired Sir William, impressed.

“Immortelles, perhaps,” irreverently murmured Trenchard to himself.

“Wax,” said the Marquise. And in the silence produced by this disclosure George remarked evenly:

“I doubt, aunt, if Mr Trenchard’s hothouses can put any such blossoms at his disposal.”

“No, egad!” ejaculated their guest, rather dismayed. “But surely, Madame——”

“No!” suddenly cried Lucienne, with colour in her cheeks and sparkling eyes, “Madame is perfectly right. I ought not to have thought of wearing flowers. Perhaps indeed it would be better if I did not go at all.”

Amelia, Trenchard, and Sir William cried out at this.

“No, no,” said the Marquise, coldly mistress of the situation; “that, I think, is an unnecessary deprivation. Lucienne shall go by all means, but I certainly think that she would do well to postpone the receiving and wearing of flowers till a later date.”

It was left to the judgment of her hearers to fix this epoch. Trenchard, mortified, bowed in silence, stealing a look at Lucienne. He had never admired her so much, for though her type, the clinging, most appealed to him, as to the majority of his sex, he liked on occasion what he considered a spice of the devil, and Mademoiselle d’Aucourt was plainly angry. But, the question of Amelia’s flowers having naturally lapsed, he shortly afterwards took his departure, invoking dubious blessings on the head of Madame de Château-Foix.

That lady, left alone with Lucienne, who was possibly too proud to flee, had produced some embroidery. From time to time, as the needle passed in and out under the lamp she threw a glance at the girl sitting by the fire, in the forlorn and dreamy attitude which was becoming habitual to her.

“I am sorry, my child,” she said at length, “to have been obliged to speak to you as I did about your flowers. Yet it was not the question of wearing flowers while still in half-mourning which distressed me—for, after all, there are many persons comme il faut who do so—but that you should permit yourself to receive them at all.”

“Madame,” responded Lucienne in a suffocated voice, without turning her head, “you made that perfectly plain.”

The Marquise laid down her embroidery. “And if I did, Lucienne, whose was the fault? I am astonished that a young girl of your birth and breeding should need a public reprimand to become acquainted with a matter so elementary. You, an affianced woman, to receive flowers from an unmarried man, who is already——”

Lucienne rose. “Who is already—what, Madame?”

“Doing his best to compromise you,” finished the Marquise unflinchingly.

Lucienne was so angry that she laughed. “And Amelia, your niece?” she asked. “Is it Mr Trenchard’s intention to compromise us both? For he offered her flowers also, and she, though she too is affianced, accepted them without hesitation.”

“Amelia,” retorted Madame de Château-Foix, “is English, and to English girls much is permitted—much, I must acknowledge, that seems strange to me. Sit down, my dear, and let us have this matter out. I have long intended to speak to you on the subject of Mr Trenchard, and since I stand to you in the place of your mother, you must allow me to do so. Lucienne, you are seeing a great deal too much of this young Englishman. He comes here day after day, he who before your arrival was scarcely more than an acquaintance of the household. You are always together; you permit yourself little secrets with him—ah, yes, I have noticed it—and it does not need very great perspicacity to guess for whom he is giving this ball to-morrow night.”

“You mean, Madame, that he is giving it for me?” enquired Lucienne. “If so, this is the first that I have heard of it. And to think that I could prevent it assumes on my part a degree of intimacy with Mr Trenchard of which I trust even you, Madame, will not accuse me.”

“I do not accuse you, my child, of anything more than thoughtlessness,” replied the Marquise gravely. “It is others who are apt to make accusations when they see you so listless when we are alone, so animated when we have company—provided the company include a young man or two, and especially if one of them be Mr Trenchard. No, Lucienne, I do not find your behaviour becoming, and I allow myself to speak thus frankly to you for your own sake, and a little, too, for Gilbert’s.”

“Madame,” returned Lucienne, shaking a trifle but very stately, “I thank you for your concern about my conduct, and I pray you to excuse me.” She crossed the room, and added at the door, in tones less assured: “I only know this, that if Gilbert were here, he would not permit even you to speak to me as you have done!”

Still less, when she was in the harbour of her own room, did Lucienne maintain her dignity of bearing. But the tears, when they came, were tears of rage. To accuse her of flirting with Trenchard! The preposterousness of the indictment stung her to a momentary vision of herself saying unanswerably to the Marquise: “If you only knew who has my heart, and will always have it!” . . . She hated Madame de Château-Foix, hated her!

But her hot anger, a little like a child’s, for all her self-control downstairs, began to sink, and in its place came the child’s instinctive desire to turn to some one for comfort. If that frail and beautiful mother, who had served to the girl as an object of admiration rather than of love, had still been in life, she would not, probably, have had her daughter’s confidence. But dead, dead a little more than a year, she was invested with qualities which had never been hers. And Lucienne wanted her more consciously than she had ever done before.

She had little craving for Madame Elisabeth. It was true that the incident which had caused the explosion had but a slight obvious connection with the hard trial through which the Princess had supported her, but in Lucienne’s mind it had merged into that source of her general unhappiness, from which in truth it was not deeply separated. And the Princess stood for that renunciation which she had never been able really and fully to make. Though in act she had done so, she had never been strong enough to renounce her lover in thought; these last months she had been farther than ever from such a consummation. She knew it, and she perhaps a little realised that it was Madame Elisabeth who, in elevating the matter to higher spheres, had caused her love for Louis to become not merely a conventional, but a moral and spiritual burden as well. So, in soul, she turned her face from her; the atmosphere her mistress breathed was too rarefied for consolation.

Yes, it was Louis himself that she wanted; Louis, whom she could have least of all—not because by her own will she had once kept him at bay, nor because the sea now tossed between them, but because, to her, that old Louis, with all his wilful charm, was gone, and in his place stood quite another person, dearer still, even more desirable, but infinitely above her—her lover once, her hero now, whom, were all that separated them to vanish, she could never have, for she was not worthy. . . . Yet, as she cast herself down by the bed in a passion of abasement, she called on his name with endearments, she evoked an echo of his voice, gay and caressing, saw the way he smiled at one with his eyes. . . . Lost—lost for ever, for he could not love her now!

Where was she to turn? She felt herself so desperate, so friendless. If Gilbert were here at this moment she felt that, in her extremity, she would tell even him. Why “even” indeed? He was like a rock. And though he were wild with anger he would be just, he would help her. . . . What folly! But . . . but there was some one else who gave that sensation of just dealing and stability. . . . Why had she not thought of him before? Would it be possible?

Slowly she got off her knees, poured out water and bathed her eyes, possessed by this new idea and reflecting on it. Then she went as slowly to her escritoire, unlocked it, sat down, and pulled out a bundle of new quills and several sheets of paper. At these she sat staring a long time. Suddenly she leant forward, and plunging her hand into a recess at the back of the escritoire, drew out a red morocco letter-case stamped with little gold pomegranates up the back, with tiny gold pinks at the corners. Several years ago—and quite without arrière pensée—Louis had given her this receptacle, which was divided within into compartments for the months. She opened it; but there was nothing there save, in the division consecrated to January, a few flattened, withered, and brittle dark objects, not very reminiscent of a handful of violets.

Lucienne put away the case, selected a quill, drew a sheet of paper towards her, and began.