"Chacun ne comprend que ce qu'il retrouve en soi."
"Chacun ne comprend que ce qu'il retrouve en soi."
Mr. Sander only made a mistake common to Englishmen when he underrated the capacity of his neighbour. Hearing from his colleague in Nice that Miste had left that city for St. Martin Lantosque, with us upon his heels, Sander concluded that our quarry would escape us, and with great promptitude set forth to Cuneo to await his arrival there.
Before leaving Genoa, however, my agent took steps to ensure the transmission of his correspondence, and a telegram despatched by Giraud from St. Martin, after my departure thence, duly reached the addressee at Cuneo. On arriving, therefore, at Genoa, and going to the Hôtel de Gênes there, I found, not Mr. Sander, but a telegraphic message from him bidding me await his return.
"At what time," I asked the waiter, "arrives the next train from Cuneo?"
"At eight o'clock, signor."
I looked at the clock. It was now seven.
"There is a steamer sailing this evening for South America," I said.
"Yes, signor; with many passengers from this hotel."
"At what time?"
"At seven o'clock—even now."
A minute later I was driving down to the docks—my swimming head full of half-matured ideas of bribing some one to delay the steamer. Then came the blessed reflection that, in the absence of Miste, his confederate would certainly not depart alone. I knew enough of their tactics to feel sure that instead of taking passage in the steamer this man (who could only be a subordinate to that master in cunning who had shot me) must perforce await his chief's arrival.
Nevertheless, I bade the man drive as quickly as the vile pavement would allow, thinking to board the steamer at all events and scrutinise the faces of her passengers. We rattled through the narrow and tortuous streets, reaching the port in time to see the last rope cast off from the great vessel as she swung round to seaward. I hurried to the pierhead, and reached the extremity of the port before thePrincipe Amadeo, which had to move with circumspection amid the shipping.
The passengers were assembled on deck, taking what many of them doubtless knew to be a lastlook at their native land. The lowering sun cast a glow over city and harbour, while a great silence hovered over all. The steamer came quite close to the pierhead. I could have tossed a letter on her deck.
Suddenly my heart stood still as my gaze lighted on the form of an old man who stood at the stern-rail a little apart from his fellow-passengers. He stood with his back turned towards me looking up to the lighthouse. Every line of his form, his attitude, the very locks of thin, white hair were familiar to me. This was the Vicomte de Clericy, and no other—the man whose funeral I had attended at Senneville six months ago. I did not cry out, or rub my eyes, or feel unreal, as people do in books. I knew that I was my sober self, and yonder was the Vicomte de Clericy. But I thought that the pier was moving and not the steamer, and bumped awkwardly against my neighbour, who looked at me curiously and apologised.
The old man by the stern-rail slowly turned and showed me his face—bland, benevolent, short-sighted. I can swear that it was the Vicomte de Clericy, though the world has only my word for it; that Lucille's father—dead, buried and mourned—stood on the deck of the steamerPrincipe Amadeoas she steamed out into the Gulf of Genoa on the evening of the 30th of May, 1871.
The precious moments slipped by, the great steamer glided past me. I heard the engine-room gong. The screw stirred the clear water, and I was left gazing stupidly at the receding form of my old patron as he stood with his placid hands clasped behind him.
It was some time before I left the spot; for my wounds had left me weak, and I have never had that quickness of brain which enables men to see the right course, and take it in a flash of thought.
The steamer had gone—was, indeed, now growing smaller on the horizon—and on board of her the Vicomte de Clericy. There was no gainsaying it. I had seen him with my own eyes, but why had he done this thing?
My shoulder throbbed painfully. I was sick at heart, and could not bring my mind to bear upon any one subject. The cab-driver had followed as far as he could, and now stood beckoning to me with his whip. I went back, and bade him drive me to the hotel; for I had not been in bed for three nights, and had a strong desire to get and remain there until this great fatigue should at length leave me.
Of what followed I have but a dim recollection; indeed, remember little from that time until I awoke in a bedroom at the Hôtel de Gênes and found a gentle pink and white face, surrounded by a snowy cap, bending over my bed.
"What time is it, and what day, my sister?" I asked, and was gently commanded to hold my tongue. She gave me a spoonful of something with no taste to it, without so much as asking me whether I wanted it. Indeed, this gentle person treated me as a child, as, moreover, I think women always treat such men as are wholly in their power.
"You must keep quiet," she said. "See, I will read to you!" and taking a book from her pocket read aloud the Psalms in a cunning sing-song voice that sent me to sleep.
When I awoke again the nun was still in the room, and, with her, Sander, talking the most atrocious French. A queer contrast. One of the world worldly, a moth that battened on the seamy side; the other far above the wickedness of men.
"Hush!" I heard her say. "He is awake, and must not hear of your affairs."
And she turned away from poor Sander, with his shrewd air, as from the world and the iniquity thereof.
He shrugged his shoulders and looked at her placid back, which, indeed, she gave him unceremoniously enough, with a hopeless contempt. Womanhood had earned, it appeared, his profoundest scorn as unbusinesslike and incompetent. Nunhood simply astounded him.
"Look here, my sister!" he said, plucking impatiently at her demure sleeve, and even in my semi-consciousness I smiled at the sound of the words from his cockney lips.
"Well?" she answered, turning her unruffled glance upon him.
Sander lowered his voice and talked hurriedly in her ear. But she only shook her head. How small the things of this world are to those who look with honest eyes beyond it!
"Well, Imusttell him—there!" exclaimed Sander, angrily, and he made a step towards the bed. But she laid her hand on his arm and held him. It was a queer picture.
"Let me go," he said. "I know best."
Her face flushed suddenly, and the nun stood before the detective.
"No," she replied quietly, "you do not know best. I am mistress here. Will you kindly go?"
She went to the door and held it open for him, her actions and words belying the meek demeanour which belongs to her calling, and which she never laid aside for a moment.
So with a hopeless mien Sander left the room, and my nurse came towards the bed.
"That," she said, softly, "is a very stupid man."
"He is not generally considered so, my sister."
She paid as little heed to my words as a nurse to the prattle of a child.
"You have moved," she said, "and this bandage is ruffled. You must try to lie quieter, for you have a nasty wound in your shoulder. I know, for I have been through the war. How came you by such a hurt now that peace has been declared?"
"The other man came by a worse one, for he is dead."
"Then the good God forgive you. But you must keep quiet. See—I will read to you."
And out came the book again in its devotional black cover. She read for a long while, but I paid no heed to her voice, nor fell under its sleepy spell. Presently she closed the pages with a pious look of reproach.
"You are not attending," she said.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I was wondering what cause you had to fall out with my agent, Mr. Sander, who is not so stupid as you think."
"He is one of those," she answered primly, "who do not know how to behave in a sick room. He foolishly wanted to talk to you of affairs—when you are not well enough. Affairs—to a sick man!"
"Who should be thinking of the affairs of another world, my sister."
"Those always should come first," she answered, with downcast eyes.
"And of what did Mr. Sander want to speak?" I asked.
She looked up with a gleam of interest. Beneath the demure bib of her professional apron there beat still a woman's heart. Sister Renée wanted to tell me the news herself.
"Oh," she answered, "it is nothing that will interest you. You are not even an Italian—only an Englishman."
"That is all, my sister."
"But all Genoa is on the housetops about it."
"Ah!"
"Yes. Never has there been so great a catastrophe; but you have no friends here, so it will not affect you."
"Therefore, I may be the more safely told. I am not affected by great catastrophes from a humane point of view."
"Well," she said, busying herself about the room with quick and noiseless movements, "but it is always terrible to hear of such a thing when one reflects that we are all so unprepared."
"For what, my sister?"
"For death," she answered, with a look of awe in the most innocent eyes in the world.
"But who is dead?"
"Three hundred people," she answered. "The passengers and crew of thePrincipe Amadeo—a large steamer that sailed last night from Genoa, with emigrants for South America."
"And all are drowned?" I asked, after a pause, thankful that my face was in the shadow of the curtain.
"All, except two of the crew. The steamer had only left the harbour an hour before, and all the passengers were at dinner. There came, I think, a fog, and in the darkness a collision occurred. ThePrincipe Amadeowent down in five minutes."
She spoke quietly, and with that calm which religion, doubtless, gave her. Indeed, her only thought seemed to be that these people had passed to their account without the ministrations of the church.
She soon left me, having my promise to sleep quietly and at once. Sœur Renée, despite her grey hairs and the wrinkles that the years (for her life seemed purged of other cause) had left, was an easy victim to deception.
I did not sleep, but lay awake for many hours, turning over in my mind the events that had followed each other so quickly. And one thought came ever uppermost—namely, that in the smallest details of our existence a judgment far superior to ours must of necessity be at work. This wiserjudgment I detected in the chance, as some will call it, that sent Sister Renée to me with this news. For if Sander had told me of the sinking of thePrincipe AmadeoI must assuredly, in the heat of the moment, have disclosed to him, in return, my knowledge that the Vicomte de Clericy was on board of her when she sailed from Genoa. Whereas, now that I had time to reflect, I saw clearly that this news belonged to Madame de Clericy alone, and was in nowise the business of Mr. Sander. That keen-witted man had faithfully performed the duty on which he had been employed—namely, to enable me to lay my hands on Charles Miste. One half of the money—a fortune in itself—had been recovered. There remained, therefore, nothing but to pay Mr. Sander and bid him farewell.
I was, however, compelled to await the arrival of Alphonse Giraud, who telegraphed to me that he was still in Nice. I did not know until long after that he had been formally arrested there for his participation in the chase of Miste that ended in that ill-starred miscreant's death. Nor did I learn, until months had elapsed, that my good friend John Turner had also hastened to Nice, taking thither with him a great Parisian lawyer to defend me in the trial that took place while I lay ill at Genoa. Sister Renée, moreover, had not laid aside her womanly guile when she took the veil, for sheconcealed from me with perfect success that I was under guard night and day in my bedroom at the Hôtel de Gênes. What had I done to earn such true friends or deserve such faithful care?
The trial passed happily enough, and Alphonse arrived at Genoa ere I had been there a week. He had delayed little in realising with a boyish delight one of his recovered drafts for five thousand pounds. He repaid such loans as I had been able to make him, settled accounts with Sander, and greatly relieved my mind by seeing him depart. For I felt in some sort a criminal myself, and the secret, which had by the merest accident been thrust upon me, discomfited me under the keen eye of the expert.
The weather was exceedingly hot, and sickness raged unchecked in the city. A fortnight elapsed, during which Giraud was my faithful attendant. The doctor who had been called in, the first of his craft with whom I had had business, a Frenchman and a clever surgeon, restored me to a certain stage of convalescence, but could not get beyond it.
"Where do you live," he asked me one day, with a grave face, "when you are at home?"
"In Suffolk, on the east coast of England."
"Where the air is different from this."
"As different as sunrise from afternoon," Ianswered, with a sudden longing for the bluff, keen air of Hopton.
"Are you a good sailor?" he asked.
"I spent half my boyhood on the North Sea."
He walked to the window and stood there in deep thought.
"Then," he said at length, "go home at once by steamer from here, and stay there. Your own country will do more for you than all the doctors in Italy."
"La plus grande preuve d'abnégation que donne l'amitié, c'est de vivre à coté de l'amour."
"La plus grande preuve d'abnégation que donne l'amitié, c'est de vivre à coté de l'amour."
Earlier in this record mention has been made—and, indeed, the reader's attention called thereto—of certain events which, in the light of subsequent knowledge, pieced themselves together like links of a chain into one complete whole.
During the quiet months that closed the year of the Commune I dwelt at Hopton, Isabella being away, and Little Corton in the care of a housekeeper. Leisure was thus afforded me for the task of piecing together these links of the past.
It was hard at first to realise that those few moments passed on the pierhead at Genoa did not form part of my illness and the dreamy memories of that time. But having always been of a matter of fact mind I allowed myself no illusions in this respect, and this strange detail of an incomprehensible life forced itself upon my understanding at length when the inexplicable became dimly legible.
In my native air I soon picked up strength, forgetting, in truth, my wounds and illness before the shooting season. Nevertheless, I throw a gun up to my shoulder less nimbly than I did before Miste's bullet found its billet among the muscles of my arm.
Madame de Clericy and Lucille had returned to Paris, but, the former wrote me, were anxious to get away from the capital, which no longer offered a pleasant home to avowed Legitimists. Madame still entrusted me with the management of her affairs, which I administeredtant bien que malby correspondence, and the harvest promised to be such a good one as to set our minds at rest respecting the immediate future.
Alphonse Giraud passed a few days, from time to time, with the ladies, but he being a poor correspondent, and I no better, we had but little knowledge of each other at this time.
Madame, I observed, made but brief reference to Lucille now. "Alphonse is with us," she would write, and nothing else; or "Lucille keeps well and is ever gay," with which scant details I had to content myself.
Twice she invited me to pass some days, or weeks, if it could be so arranged, at the Rue des Palmiers, and twice I refused. For in truth I scarcely wished to meet Madame de Clericy until my chain was pieced together and I could laybefore her a tale of evidence that had no weak link in it.
In the month of September I journeyed to Paris, staying there but two days, and so arranging my movements that I met neither Madame de Clericy and her daughter nor Alphonse. I succeeded beyond my expectations in forging an important link.
"Perhaps, as you cannot leave your estates just now," Madame had written, "you will come to us at La Pauline towards the end of the vintage. Indeed, my friend, I must ask you to make an effort to do so, for I learn that the harvest will be a heavy one, and your judgment will be required in financial matters since you are so good as to place it at our disposal."
To this I had returned a vague answer, thinking that before that time Alphonse might have news to tell us which would alter many arrangements and a few lives. For now that he had recovered a greater part of his vast wealth there could, assuredly, be no reason for further delay in pressing his suitauprès deLucille.
I had, by the way, propounded to John Turner the problem that would arise in the case of our having to conclude that Miste's confederate had perished in the ill-fatedPrincipe Amadeo, taking out of this world, if he could not carry it to the next, the remainder of Giraud's fortune.
"Within five years," he answered me, "Giraud will be repaid the value of the missing drafts, for we have now a sufficient excuse to stop payment of them, assuming, as we may safely do, that the bills were lost at sea."
In the same letter my old friend imparted some news affecting myself.
"I am," he wrote, "getting on in years, and fatter. In view of these facts I have made a will leaving you, by the way, practically my heir. A man who could refuse to marry such a pretty girl as Isabella Gayerson, with such an exceedingly pretty fortune as she possesses, deserves to have money troubles; so I bequeath 'em to you."
Towards the end of September Madame again wrote to me with the information that they were installed at La Pauline for the winter, and begged me to name the day when I could visit them. With due deliberation I accepted this invitation, and wrote to Giraud in Paris that I was about to pass through that city, and would much like to see him as often as possible.
"You know, Dick," he said to me, when we had dined together at his club, "it is better fun being ruined. All this money—Mon Dieu—what a trouble it is!"
"Yes," answered I—and the words came frommy heart—"it only brings ill fortune to those that have it."
Nevertheless, Alphonse Giraud was quite happy in the recovery of his wealth, and took much enjoyment in its expenditure on others. Never, surely, beat a more generous heart than Giraud's, for whom to spend his money on a friend was the greatest known happiness.
"You remember," he cried, "how we used to drink our Benedictine in claret glasses only. Ah! what it is to be young,n'est ce pas! and to think that we shall one day get all we want!"
His quick face darkened suddenly, and all the boyishness vanished from it.
"I have been," he said, "a famous fool—and thou art another, my grim-faced Englishman. But I have found out my folly, and discover that there is still happiness in this world—enough to go on with, at all events."
I rose to bid him good-night, for I had to make an early start the next morning.
"I only hope, mon ami," he said, taking my hand in his small fingers, "that the good God will show you soon what a fool you have been."
I arrived at Draguignan late on the following evening, and put up at the Hôtel Bertin there, than which the traveller will find no better accommodation in Provence. I had not named the hour or dayof my proposed arrival at La Pauline, knowing that the affairs of Madame de Clericy might delay me in Paris, which, in fact, they did.
The next morning I set out on foot for the Chateau of La Pauline by the road passing through the vineyards and olive groves lately despoiled of their fruit. The rich hues of autumn were creeping up the mountains, where the cool air of the upper slopes preserved the verdure longer than in the sunburnt valley. The air was light and fresh, with a brisk breeze from the west. The world seemed instinct with fruition and the gathering of that which had been sown with toil and carefulness. Is it the world that fits itself to our humour, or does the Creator mould our thoughts with wind and sky, light and shade?
As I neared the Chateau my heart sank within me, for I had but evil news for the lady whom I respected above all women, save one—and how would Madame take my tidings? It seemed best to ask her to speak to me alone, for much that I had to relate was surely for the wife's ear, and would need to be tempered to the daughter's hearing. This expedient was, however, spared me, for as I approached the old Chateau I noted the presence of some one in the trellis-covered summerhouse at the eastern end of the terrace, and caught the flutter of what seemed to be a white handkerchief. It was, I soon perceived, Madame at her lace-work—and alone.
Leaving the road I took a path through the olive groves and came upon Madame, not however by surprise, for she saw me approaching and laid aside her work.
"So you have come at last," she said, holding out her kind hand.
We went into the vine-grown hut and sat down, Madame looking at me with deep speculation.
"You are a strong man, mon ami," she said. "For one sees no signs in your face of what you have gone through."
But it was not of myself that I had come to talk. The tale had to be told to Madame de Clericy, and being a plain-spoken Englishman and no hero of a book, I purposed telling it briefly without allegory or symbol.
"Madame," I said, "it was not Miste who took the money. It was not the Baron Giraud that we buried from the Rue des Palmiers. It was not the Vicomte de Clericy that we found in the Seine near Passy and laid to earth in the churchyard at Senneville."
And I saw that the Vicomtesse thought me mad.
"My poor friend," she said, with the deepestpity in her voice, "why do you talk like that, and what do you mean?"
THE VICOMTESSE TURNED A LITTLE IN HER CHAIR, AND, LEANING HER ELBOW ON THE TABLE, SHOWED ME ONLY HER PROFILE AS SHE SAT, WITH HER CHIN IN THE PALM OF HER HAND, LOOKING DOWN INTO THE VALLEY.THE VICOMTESSE TURNED A LITTLE IN HER CHAIR, AND, LEANING HER ELBOW ON THE TABLE, SHOWED ME ONLY HER PROFILE AS SHE SAT, WITH HER CHIN IN THE PALM OF HER HAND, LOOKING DOWN INTO THE VALLEY.
"I only mean, Madame, that no man is safe in temptation, and that money is the greatest of all. I would not trust myself with ten million francs. I would not now trust any man on earth."
"Why?"
And I thought that in Madame's eyes there was already the light of understanding. For a moment I paused, and she said quickly:
"Is my husband alive?"
"No, Madame."
The Vicomtesse turned a little in her chair, and, leaning her elbow on the table, showed me only her profile as she sat, with her chin in the palm of her hand, looking down into the valley.
"Tell me all you know," she said. "I will not interrupt you; but do not pity me."
"The Baron Giraud did my old patron a great wrong when, in his selfish fear, he placed that great fortune in his care. For it appears that no man may trust himself where money is concerned, and no other has a right to tempt him. So far as we can judge, the Vicomte had all that he could want. I know he had more money than he cared to spend. You are aware, Madame, that I had the greatest respect and admiration for your husband. During the months that we were in daily intercourse heendeared himself to me by a hundred kindnesses, a thousand tokens of what I hope was affection."
Madame nodded briefly, and I hastened on with my narrative, for suspense is the keenest arrow in the quiver of human suffering.
"What I have learnt has been gathered with the greatest care from many sources, and what I now tell you is neither known nor suspected by any other on earth. If you so desire, the knowledge can well remain the property of two persons only."
"My friend," Madame said on the impulse of the kindest heart in the world, "I think your strength lies in the depth of your thought for others."
"The Vicomte was tempted," I went on. "He had in his nature a latent love of money. The same is in many natures, but the majority have never the opportunity of gratifying it. He did what ninety-nine out of a hundred other men would have done—what I think I should have done myself. He yielded. He had at hand a ready tool and the cleverest aid in Charles Miste, who actually carried the money, but for some reason—possibly because he was unable to forge the necessary signatures—could not obtain the cash for the drafts without the Vicomte's assistance. Unconsciously, I repeatedly prevented their meeting, and thus frustrated the design."
All the while Madame sat and looked down into the valley. Her self-command was infinite, for she must have had a thousand questions to ask.
"It was, I think, my patron's intention to go to the New World with his great wealth and there begin life afresh—this, however, is one of the details that must ever remain incomprehensible. Possibly when the temptation gripped him he ceased to reflect at all—else he must assuredly have recognised all that he was sacrificing for the mere possession of money that he could never live to spend. Men usually pay too high a price for their desires. In order to carry out his scheme he conceived and accomplished—with a strange cunning, which develops, I am told, after crime—a clever ruse."
Madame turned and looked at me for a moment.
"We must think of him, Madame," I explained, "as one suffering from a mental disease; for the love of money in its acute stages is nothing else, lacking, as it assuredly does, common sense. The most singular part of his mental condition was the rapidity and skill with which he turned events to his own advantage, and seized each opportunity for the furtherance of his ends. The Baron Giraud died at the Hôtel Clericy—here was a chance. The Vicomte, with a cunning which was surely unnatural—you remember his strange behaviour atthat time, how he locked himself in his study for hours together—took therefore the Baron's body from the coffin, dressed it in his own garments, placed in the clothing his own purse, and pocket-book, and cast the body into the Seine. I have had the coffin that we laid in Père la Chaise exhumed and opened. It contained only old books from the upper shelves in the study in the Rue des Palmiers. The Vicomte must have packed it thus when he took the Baron's body—doubtless with Miste's clever aid—and threw it into the river for us to find and identify."
"Yes," said Madame, slowly, "he was cleverer than any suspected. I knew that."
"The body," I went on, for my tale was nearly done, "which we found at Passy and buried at Senneville was undoubtedly that of the Baron Giraud. This, however, is the only detail of my story which I am unable to assert as a positive fact."
"Of the rest you have no doubt?" Madame asked, slowly. And I shook my head.
"Is it not possible," she suggested, with that quiet sureness of judgment which, I think, is rarely given to women, "that Miste is alone responsible and the criminal? Of course, I cannot explain the Baron Giraud's disappearance—but it is surelypossible that Miste may have murdered the Vicomte and thrown his body into the Seine."
"No, Madame, there has been no murder done."
"You are sure?"
"I have, since the war, seen the Vicomte alive and well."
"Le plus lent à promettre est toujours le plus fidèle à tenir."
"Le plus lent à promettre est toujours le plus fidèle à tenir."
The tale was thus told to her whom it most concerned, clearly and without reservation. The details are, however, known to the patient reader, and call for no recapitulation here. When Madame de Clericy heard the end of it—namely, the sad fate of the unfortunatePrincipe Amadeoand all, save two, on board that steamer—she sat in silence for some moments, and indeed made no comment at any other time. Assuredly none was needed, nor could any human words add to or detract from that infallible Divine judgment which had so ruled our lives.
For when one who is dear to us has forfeited our love by one of those great and sorrowful alterations of the mind, scarce amounting to madness, and yet near akin to it, which, alas! are frequently enough brought about by temptation or an insufficient self control—surely, then, it is only Heaven's kindness that takes from us the erring one and leaves but a brief memory of his fall. Has not agreat writer said that a dead sorrow is better than a living one?
I rose to my feet and stood for a moment in the doorway of the summerhouse, intending to leave Madame with her dead grief. But as I crossed the threshold her quiet voice arrested me.
"Mon ami!" she said, and, as I paused without looking round, presently went on—well pleased, perhaps, that I should not see her face.
"One mistake you make in the kindness of your heart, for you are a stern man with a soft heart, as many English are—you grieve too much for me. Of course, it is a sorrow—but it is not the great sorrow. You understand?"
"I think so."
"That came to me many years ago, and was not connected with the Vicomte de Clericy, but with one who had no title beyond that of gentleman—and I think there is none higher. It is an old story, and one that is too often enacted in France, where convenience is placed before happiness and money above affection. My life has been, well—happy. Lucille has made it so. And I have an aim in existence which is in itself a happiness—to make Lucille's life a happy one, to ensure her that which I have missed, and to avoid a mistake made by generation after generation of women—namely, to believe that love comes to us after marriage. Itnever does so, my friend—never. Tolerance may come, or, at the best, affection—which is making an ornament of brass and setting it up where there should be gold—or nothing."
I stood, half turning my back to Madame, looking down into the valley—not caring to meet the quiet eyes that had looked straight into my heart long ago in the room called the boudoir of the house in the Rue des Palmiers, and had ever since read the thoughts and desires which I had hidden from the rest of the world. Madame knew, without any words of mine, that I also had one object in existence, and that the same as hers—namely, that Lucille's life should be a happy one.
"There is no task so difficult," said Madame, half talking, as I thought, to herself, "unless it be undertaken by the one man who can do it without an effort—no task so difficult as that of making a woman happy. Even her mother cannot be sure of the wisdom of interference. I always remember some words of your friend, John Turner, 'When in doubt, do nothing,' and he is a wise man, I think."
The Vicomtesse was an economist of words, and explained herself no further. We remained for some moments in silence, and it was she who at length broke it.
"Thank you," she said, "for all your thoughtand care in verifying the details of the story you have told me."
"I might have kept it from you, Madame," answered I, "and thus spared you some sorrow. Perhaps you had been happier in ignorance."
"I think, my dear friend, I am better knowing it. Shall we tell Lucille?"
I turned and looked at Madame, whose manner bespoke my attention. There was more in the words than a single question—indeed, I thought there were many questions.
"That shall be as you decide."
"I ask your opinion, mon ami?"
"I am not in favour of keeping any secrets from Mademoiselle."
For a time Madame seemed lost in thought.
"If you go to the chateau," she said at length, taking up her lace-work as she spoke, "you will find Lucille either in the garden or the chapel, where she daily tends the flowers. Tell her anything—you please."
I left Madame and walked slowly across the garden. Lucille was not among the gay flower-borders. I passed by the old sun-dial and into the shade of the trees that stood by the moat, where the frogs chattered incessantly in the cool shadows. I never hear the sound now but something stirs in my breast, which is not regret nor yet entire happiness, but that strange blending of the two which is far above the mere earthly understanding of the latter state.
In the shadow of the cypress trees I approached the chapel quietly, of which the door and windows were alike thrown open. Standing in the cool shadow of the porch I saw that Lucille was not busy with the flowers, but having completed her task, knelt for a moment before the altar, raising to heaven a face surely as pure as that of any angel there.
I sat down in the porch to wait.
Presently Lucille rose from her knees and turning came towards me. I thought, as I always did on seeing her after an absence short or long, that I had never really loved her until that moment.
I looked for some expression of surprise in her eyes, but it seemed that she must have known who had entered before she turned. Instead I saw in her face a strange new tenderness that set my heart beating. She gave me her hand with a gesture of shyness that was likewise unknown to me.
"Why do you look at me like that?" she asked, sharply.
"I was wondering what your thought was as you came towards me, Mademoiselle."
"Ah!" she answered, with a shake of the head.
"ME VOILÀ, IF YOU WANT ME""ME VOILÀ, IF YOU WANT ME"
"It could not have been that you were glad tosee me here? Yet, one would almost have thought—"
She broke into a light laugh.
"It is so easy to think wrong," she said.
I had sat down again, hoping that she would do the same; but she remained standing a few yards away from me, her shoulder against the grey old wall of the porch. She was looking out into the shadow of the trees, and to be near her was a greater happiness than I can tell.
"Do you find it easy to think wrong, Mademoiselle?"
"Yes," she answered, gently.
"And I also."
We remained silent for a few minutes, and the chatter of the frogs in the moat sounded pleasant and peaceful.
"What have you thought that was wrong?" asked Lucille at length.
"I thought that you loved Alphonse Giraud, and would marry him."
Lucille stood and never looked at me.
"Was I wrong, Mademoiselle?"
"Yes—and I told Alphonse so from the beginning, but he did not believe me until lately."
"I thought it was he," I said.
"No—nor any like him. If ever I did—either of those things—it would need to be a man—oneof strong will who would be master, not only of me, but of men; one whom I should always think wiser and stronger and braver than any other."
I looked at her, and saw nothing but her profile and the gleam of a sun-ray on her hair.
"Am I a man, Mademoiselle?"
There was a silence, a long one, I thought it.
"Yes," she answered at last, barely audible; and as she spoke stepped out into the broken shade of the cypress trees. She went a few paces away from me—then came slowly back and stood before me. Her face was quite colourless, but there was that in her eyes that brings heaven down to earth.
"Me voilà," she said, with a queer little gesture of self-abandonment. "Me voilà, if you want me."