CHAPTER XVII — ON THE PONT ROYAL

It would appear that John Turner had business south of the Seine, though his clients were few in the Faubourg St. Germain. For this placid British banker was known to be a good hater. His father before him, it was said, had had dealings with the Bourbons, while many a great family of the Emigration would have lost more than the esteem of their fellows in their panic-stricken flight, had it not been that one cool-headed and calm man of business stayed at his post through the topsy-turvy days of the Terror, and did his duty by the clients whom he despised.

On quitting the Louvre, by the door facing the Palais Royal, Turner moved to the left. To say that he walked would be to overstate the action of his little stout legs, which took so short a stride that his progress suggested wheels and some one pushing behind. He turned to the left again, and ambled under the great arch, to take the path passing behind the Tuileries.

His stoutness was, in a sense, a safeguard in streets where the travelling Englishman, easily recognised, has not always found a welcome. His clothes and his walk were studiously French. Indeed, no one, passing by with a casual glance, would have turned to look a second time at a figure so typical of the Paris streets.

Mr. Turner quitted the enclosure of the Tuileries gardens and crossed the quay toward the Pont Royal. But he stopped short under the trees by the river wall, with a low whistle of surprise. Crossing the bridge, toward him, and carrying a carpet-bag of early Victorian design, was Mr. Septimus Marvin, rector of Farlingford, in Suffolk.

After a moment’s thought, John Turner went toward the bridge, and stationed himself on the pavement at the corner. The pavement is narrow, and Turner was wide. In order to pass him, Septimus Marvin would need to step into the road. This he did, without resentment; with, indeed, a courtly and vague inclination of the head toward the human obstruction.

“Look here, Sep,” said Turner, “you are not going to pass an old schoolfellow like that.”

Septimus Marvin lurched onward one or two steps, with long loose strides. Then he clutched his carpet-bag with both hands and looked back at his interlocutor, with the scared eyes of a detected criminal. This gave place to the habitual gentle smile when, at last, the recognition was complete.

“What have you got there?” asked Turner, pointing with his stick at the carpet-bag. “A kitten?”

“No—no,” replied Marvin, looking this way and that, to make sure that none could overhear.

“A Nanteuil—engraved from his own drawing, Jack—a real Nanteuil. I have just been to a man I know—the print-shop opposite the statue on the Quai Voltaire—to have my own opinion verified. I was sure of it. He says that I am undoubtedly right. It is a genuine Nanteuil—a proof before letters.”

“Ah! And you have just picked it up cheap? Picked it up, eh?”

“No, no, quite the contrary,” Marvin replied, in a confidential whisper.

“Stolen—dear, dear! I am sorry to hear that, Septimus.”

And Septimus Marvin broke into the jerky, spasmodic laugh of one who has not laughed for long—perhaps for years.

“Ah, Jack,” he said; “you are still up to a joke.”

“Well, I should hope so. We are quite close to my club. Come, and have luncheon, and tell me all about it.”

So the Social and Sporting Club, renowned at that day for its matchless cuisine and for nothing else of good repute at all, entertained an angel unawares, and was much amused at Septimus Marvin’s appearance, although the amusement was not apparent. The members, it would appear, were gentlemen of that good school of old France which, like many good things both French and English, is fast disappearing. And with all those faults, which we are so ready to perceive in any Frenchman, there is none on earth who will conceal from you so effectually the fact that in his heart he is vastly amused.

It was with some difficulty that Septimus was persuaded to consign his carpet-bag to the custody of the hall-porter.

“If it wasn’t a Nanteuil,” he explained in a whisper to his friend, “I should have no hesitation; for I am sure the man is honest and in every way to be relied upon. But a Nanteuil—ad vivum—Jack. There are none like him. It is priceless.”

“You used not to be a miser,” said Turner, panting on the stairs, when at last the bag was concealed in a safe place. “What matter what the value may be, so long as you like it?”

“Oh! but the value is of great importance,” answered Septimus, rather sheepishly.

“Then you have changed a good deal since you and I were at Ipswich school together. There, sit down at this table. I suppose you are hungry. I hope you are. Try and think—there’s a good fellow—and remember that they have the best cook in Paris here. Their morals ain’t of the first water, but their cook is without match. Yes, you have changed a good deal, if you think of money.”

Septimus Marvin had changed colour, at all events, in the last few minutes.

“I have to, Jack, I have to. That is the truth of it. I have come to Paris to sell that Nanteuil. To realise, I suppose you would call it in the financial world.Pro aris et focis, old friend. I want money for the altar and the hearth. It has come to that. I cannot ask them in Farlingford for more money, for I know they have none. And the church is falling about our ears. The house wants painting. It is going the way of the church, indeed.”

“Ah!” said Turner, glancing at him over the bill of fare. “So you have to sell an engraving. It goes to the heart, I suppose?”

Marvin laughed and rubbed his spare hands together, with an assumption of cheerfulness in which some one less stout and well-to-do than his companion might have perceived that dim minor note of pathos, which always rings somewhere in a forced laugh.

“One has to face it,” he replied. “Ne cedas malis, you know. I suddenly found it was necessary. It was forced upon me, in fact. I found that my niece was secretly helping to make both ends meet. A generous action, made doubly generous by the manner in which it was performed.”

“Miriam?” put in John Turner, who appeared to be absorbed in the all-important document before him.

“Yes, Miriam. Do you know her? Ah! I forgot. You are her guardian and trustee. I sometimes think my memory is failing. I found her out quite by accident. It must have been going on for quite a long time. Heaven will reward her, Turner! One cannot doubt it.”

He absent-mindedly seized two pieces of bread from the basket offered to him by a waiter, and began to eat as if famished.

“Steady, man, steady,” exclaimed Turner, leaning forward with a horror-stricken face to restrain him. “Don’t spoil a grand appetite on bread. Gad! I wish I could fall on my food like that. You seem to be starving.”

“I think I forgot to have any breakfast,” said Marvin, apologetically.

“I dare say you did!” was the angry retort. “You always were a bit of an ass, you know, Sep. But I have ordered a tiptop luncheon, and I’ll trouble you not to wolf like that.”

“Well—well, I’m sorry,” said the other, who, even in the far-off days at Ipswich school, had always been in the clouds, while John Turner moved essentially on the earth.

“And do not sell that Nanteuil to the first bidder,” went on Turner, with a glance, of which the keenness was entirely disarmed by the good-natured roundness of his huge cheeks. “I know a man who will buy it—at a good price, too. Where did you get it?”

“Ah! that is a long story,” replied Marvin, looking dreamily out of the window. “I bought it, years ago, at Farlingford. But it is a long story.”

“Then tell it, slowly. While I eat thissole à la Normande. I see you’ve nearly finished yours, and I have scarcely begun.”

It was a vague and disjointed enough story, as related by Septimus Marvin. And it was the story of Loo Barebone’s father. As it progressed John Turner grew redder and redder in the face, while he drank glass after glass of Burgundy.

“A queer story,” he ejaculated, breathlessly. “Go on. And you bought this engraving from the man himself, before he died? Did he tell you where he got it? It is the portrait of a woman, you say.”

“Portrait of a woman—yes, yes. But he did not know who she was. And I do not know whether I gave him enough for it. Do you think I did, Jack?”

“I do not know how much you gave him, but I have no doubt that it was too much. Where did he get it?”

“He thinks it was brought from France by his mother, or the woman who was supposed in Farlingford to be his mother—together with other papers, which he burnt, I believe.”

“And then he died?”

“Yes—yes. He died—but he left a son.”

“The devil he did! Why did you not mention that before? Where is the son? Tell me all about him, while I see how they’ve served thislangue fourrée, which should be eaten slowly; though it is too late to remind you of that now. Go on. Tell me all about the son.”

And before the story of Loo Barebone was half told, John Turner laid aside his knife and fork and turned his attention to the dissection of this ill-told tale. As the story neared its end, he glanced round the room, to make sure that none was listening to their conversation.

“Dormer Colville,” he repeated. “Does he come into it?”

“He came to Farlingford with the Marquis de Gemosac, out of pure good-nature—because the Marquis could speak but little English. He is a charming man. So unselfish and disinterested.”

“Who? The Marquis?”

“No; Dormer Colville.”

“Oh yes!” said John Turner, returning to the cold tongue. “Yes; a charming fellow.”

And he glanced again at his friend, with a queer smile. When luncheon was finished, Turner led the way to a small smoking-room, where they would be alone, and sent a messenger to fetch Septimus Marvin’s bag from downstairs.

“We will have a look at your precious engraving,” he said, “while we smoke a cigar. It is, I suppose, a relic of the Great Monarchy, and I may tell you that there is rather a small demand just now for relics of that period. It would be wiser not to take it into the open market. I think my client would give you as good a price as any; and I suppose you want to get as much as you can for it now that you have made up your mind to the sacrifice?”

Marvin suppressed a sigh, and rubbed his hands together with that forced jocularity which had made his companion turn grave once before.

“Oh, I mean to drive a hard bargain, I can tell you!” was the reply, with an assumption of worldly wisdom on a countenance little calculated to wear that expression naturally.

“What did your friend in the print-shop on the Quai Voltaire mention as a probable price?” asked Turner, carelessly.

“Well, he said he might be able to sell it for me at four thousand francs. I would not hear of his running any risk in the matter, however. Such a good fellow, he is. So honest.”

“Yes, he is likely to be that,” said Turner, with his broad smile. He was a little sleepy after a heavy luncheon, and sipped his coffee with a feeling of charity toward his fellow-men. “You would find lots of honest men in the Quai Voltaire, Sep. I will tell you what I will do. Give me the print, and I will do my best for you. Would ten thousand francs help you out of your difficulties?”

“I do not remember saying that I was in difficulties,” objected the Reverend Septimus, with heightened colour.

“Don’t you? Memoryisbad, is it not? Would ten thousand francs paint the rectory, then?”

“It would ease my mind and sweeten my sleep at night to have half that sum, my friend. With two hundred pounds I could face the worldaequo animo.”

“I will see what I can do. This is the print, is it? I don’t know much about such things myself, but I should put the price down at ten thousand francs.”

“But the man in the Quai Voltaire?”

“Precisely. I know little about prints, but a lot about the Quai Voltaire. Who is the lady? I presume it is a portrait?”

“It is a portrait, but I cannot identify the original. To an expert of that period it should not be impossible, however.” Septimus Marvin was all awake now, with flushed cheeks and eyes brightened by enthusiasm. “Do you know why? Because her hair is dressed in a peculiar way—poufs de sentiment, these curls are called. They were only worn for a brief period. In those days the writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau had a certain vogue among the idle classes. The women showed their sentiments in the dressing of their hair. Very curious—very curious. And here, in the hair, half-concealed, is an imitation dove’s nest.”

“The deuce there is!” ejaculated Turner, pulling at his cigar.

“A fashion which ruled for a still briefer period.”

“I should hope so. Well, roll the thing up, and I will do my best for you. I’m less likely to be taken in than you are, perhaps. If I sell it, I will send you a cheque this evening. It is a beautiful face.”

“Yes,” agreed Septimus Marvin, with, a sharp sigh. “It is a beautiful face.”

And he slowly rolled up his most treasured possession, which John Turner tucked under his arm. On the Pont Royal they parted company.

“By the way,” said John Turner, after they had shaken hands, “You never told me what sort of a man this young fellow is—this Loo Barebone?”

“The dearest fellow in the world,” answered Marvin, with eyes aglow behind his spectacles. “To me he has been as a son—an elder brother, as it were, to little Sep. I was already an elderly man, you know, when Sep was born. Too old, perhaps. Who knows? Heaven’s way is not always marked very clearly.”

He nodded vaguely and went away a few paces. Then he remembered something and came back.

“I don’t know if I ought to speak of such a thing. But I quite hoped, at one time, that Miriam might one day recognise his goodness of heart.”

“What?” interrupted Turner. “The mate of a coasting schooner!”

“He is more than that, my friend,” answered Septimus Marvin, nodding his head slowly, so that the sun flashed on his spectacles in such a manner as to make Turner blink. Then he turned away again and crossed the bridge, leaving the English banker at the corner of it, still blinking.

There are in humble life some families which settle their domestic differences on the doorstep, while the neighbours, gathered hastily by the commotion, tiptoe behind each other to watch the fun. In the European congerie France represents this loud-voiced household, and Paris—Paris, the city that soon forgets—is the doorstep whereon they wrangle.

The bones of contention may be pitched far and wide by the chances and changes of exile, but the contending dogs bark and yap in Paris. At this time there lived, sometimes in Italy, sometimes at Frohsdorf, a jovial young gentleman, fond of sport and society, cultivating the tastes and enjoying the easy existence of a country-gentleman of princely rank—the Comte de Chambord. Son of that Duchesse de Berri who tried to play a great part and failed, he was married to an Italian princess and had no children. He was, therefore, the last of the Bourbons, and passed in Europe as such. But he did not care. Perhaps his was the philosophy of the indolent which saith that some one must be last and why not I?

Nevertheless, there ran in his veins some energetic blood. On his father’s side he was descended from sixty-six kings of France. From his mother he inherited a relationship to many makers of history. For the Duchesse de Berri’s grandmother was the sister of Marie Antoinette. Her mother was aunt to that Empress of the French, Marie Louise, who was a notable exception to the rule that “Bon sang ne peut mentir.” Her father was a king of Sicily and Naples. She was a Bourbon married to a Bourbon. When she was nineteen she gave birth to a daughter, who died next day. In a year she had a son who died in twenty hours. Two years later her husband died in her arms, assassinated, in a back room of the Opera House in Paris.

Seven months after her husband’s death she gave birth to the Comte de Chambord, the last of the old Bourbons. She was active, energetic and of boundless courage. She made a famous journey through La Vendée on horseback to rally the Royalists. She urged her father-in-law, Charles X, to resist the revolution. She was the best Royalist of them all. And her son was the Comte de Chambord, who could have been a king if he had not been a philosopher, or a coward.

He was waiting till France called him with one voice. As if France had ever called for anything with one voice!

Amid the babel there rang out not a few voices for the younger branch of the Royal line—the Orleans. Louis Philippe—king for eighteen years—was still alive, living in exile at Claremont. Two years earlier, in the rush of the revolution of 1848, he had effected his escape to Newhaven. The Orleans always seek a refuge in England, and always turn and abuse that country when they can go elsewhere in safety. And England is not one penny the worse for their abuse, and no man or country was ever yet one penny the better for their friendship.

Louis Philippe had been called to the throne by the people of France. His reign of eighteen years was marked by one great deed. He threw open the Palace of Versailles—which was not his—to the public. And then the people who called him in, hooted him out. His life had been attempted many times. All the other kings hated him and refused to let their daughters marry his sons. He and his sons were waiting at Claremont while the talkers in Paris talked their loudest.

There was a third bone of contention—the Imperial line. At this time the champions of this morsel were at the summit; for a Bonaparte was riding on the top of the revolutionary scrimmage.

By the death of the great Napoleon’s only child, the second son of his third brother became the recognised claimant to the Imperial crown.

For France has long ceased to look to the eldest son as the rightful heir. There is, in fact, a curse on the first-born of France. Napoleon’s son, the King of Rome, died in exile, an Austrian. The Duc de Bordeaux, born eight years after him, never wore the crown, and died in exile, childless. The Comte de Paris, born also at the Tuileries, was exiled when he was ten years old, and died in England. All these, of one generation. And of the next, the Prince Imperial, hurried out of France in 1870, perished on the Veldt. The King of Rome lies in his tomb at Vienna, the Duc de Bordeaux at Göritz, the Comte de Paris at Weybridge, the Prince Imperial at Farnborough. These are the heirs of France, born in the palace of the Tuileries. How are they cast upon the waters of the world! And where the palace of the Tuileries once stood the pigeons now call to each other beneath the trees, while, near at hand, lolls on the public seat he whom France has always with her, thevaurien—the worth-nothing.

So passes the glory of the world. It is not a good thing to be born in a palace, nor to live in one.

It was in the Rue Lafayette that John Turner had his office, and when he emerged from it into that long street on the evening of the 25th of August, 1850, he ran against, or he was rather run against by, the newsboy who shrieked as he pattered along in lamentable boots and waved a sheet in the face of the passer: “The King is dead! The King is dead!”

And Paris—the city that soon forgets—smiled and asked what King?

Louis Philippe was dead in England, at the age of seventy-seven, the bad son of a bad father, another of those adventurers whose happy hunting-ground always has been, always will be, France.

John Turner, like many who are slow in movement, was quick in thought. He perceived at once that the death of Louis Philippe left the field open to the next adventurer; for he left behind him no son of his own mettle.

Turner went back to his office, where the pen with which he had signed a cheque for four hundred pounds, payable to the Reverend Septimus Marvin, was still wet; where, at the bottom of the largest safe, the portrait of an unknown lady of the period of Louis XVI lay concealed. He wrote out a telegram to Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, addressed to her at her villa near Royan, and then proceeded to his dinner with the grave face of the careful critic.

The next morning he received the answer, at his breakfast-table, in the apartment he had long occupied in the Avenue d’Antin. But he did not open the envelope. He had telegraphed to Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, asking if it would be convenient for her to put him up for a few days. And he suspected that it would not.

“When I am gone,” he said to his well-trained servant, “put that into an envelope and send it after me to the Villa Cordouan, Royan. Pack my portmanteau for a week.”

Thus John Turner set out southward to join a party of those Royalists whom his father before him had learnt to despise. And in a manner he was pre-armed; for he knew that he would not be welcome. It was in those days a long journey, for the railway was laid no farther than Tours, from whence the traveller must needs post to La Rochelle, and there take a boat to Royan—that shallow harbour at the mouth of the Gironde.

“Must have a change—of cooking,” he explained to Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence. “Doctor says I am getting too stout.”

He shook her deliberately by the hand without appearing to notice her blank looks.

“So I came south and shall finish up at Biarritz, which they say is going to be fashionable. I hope it is not inconvenient for you to give me a bed—a solid one—for a night or two.”

“Oh no!” answered Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, who had charming manners, and was one of those fortunate persons who are never at a loss. “Did you not receive my telegram?”

“Telling me you were counting the hours till my arrival?”

“Well,” admitted Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, wisely reflecting that he would ultimately see the telegram, “hardly so fervent as that—”

“Good Lord!” interrupted Turner, looking behind her toward the veranda, which was cool and shady, where two men were seated near a table bearing coffee-cups. “Who is that?”

“Which?” asked Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, without turning to follow the direction of his glance. “Oh! one is Dormer Colville, I see that. But the other—gad!”

“Why do you say gad?” asked the lady, with surprise.

“Where did he get that face from?” was the reply.

Turner took off his hat and mopped his brow; for it was very hot and the August sun was setting over a copper sea.

“Where we all get our faces from, I suppose!” answered Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, with her easy laugh. She was always mistress of the situation. “The heavenly warehouse, one supposes. His name is Barebone. He is a friend of Dormer’s.”

“Any friend of Dormer Colville’s commands my interest.”

Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence glanced quickly at her companion beneath the shade of her lace-trimmed parasol.

“What do you mean by that?” she asked, in a voice suddenly hard and resentful.

“That he chooses his friends well,” returned the banker, with his guileless smile. His face was bovine, and in the heat of summer apt to be shiny. No one would attribute an inner meaning to a stout person thus outwardly brilliant. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence appeared to be mollified, and turned toward the house with a gesture inviting him to walk with her.

“I will be frank with you,” she said. “I telegraphed to tell you that the Villa Cordouan is for the moment unfortunately filled with guests.”

“What matter? I will go to the hotel. In fact, I told the driver of my carriage to wait for further orders. I half feared that at this time of year, you know, house would be full. I’ll just shake hands with Colville and then be off. You will let me come in after dinner, perhaps. You and I must have a talk about money, you will remember.”

There was no time to answer; for Dormer Colville, perceiving their approach, was already hurrying down the steps of the veranda to meet them. He laughed as he came, for John Turner’s bulk made him a laughing matter in the eyes of most men, and his good humour seemed to invite them to frank amusement.

The greeting was, therefore, jovial enough on both sides, and after being introduced to Loo Barebone, Mr. Turner took his leave without farther defining his intentions for the evening.

“I do not think it matters much,” Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence said to her two guests, when he had left. “And he may not come, after all.”

Her self-confidence sufficiently convinced Loo, who was always ready to leave something to chance. But Colville shook his head.

It thus came about that sundry persons of title and importance who had been invited to come to the Villa Cordouan after dinner for a little music found the English banker complacently installed in the largest chair, with a shirt-front evading the constraint of an abnormal waistcoat, and a sleepy chin drooping surreptitiously toward it.

“He is my banker from Paris,” whispered Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence to one and another. “He knows nothing, and so far as I am aware, is no politician—merely a banker, you understand. Leave him alone and he will go to sleep.”

During the three weeks which Loo Barebone had spent very pleasantly at the Villa Cordouan, Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence had provided music and light refreshment for her friends on several occasions. And each evening the drawing-room, which was not a small one, had been filled to overflowing. Friends brought their friends and introduced them to the hostess, who in turn presented them to Barebone. Some came from a distance, driving from Saintes or La Rochelle or Pons. Others had taken houses for the bathing-season at Royan itself.

“He never makes a mistake,” said the hostess to Dormer Colville, behind her fan, a hundred times, following with her shrewd eyes the gay and easy movements of Loo, who seemed to be taught by some instinct to suit his manner to his interlocutor.

To-night there was more music and less conversation.

“Play him to sleep,” Dormer Colville had said to his cousin. And at length Turner succumbed to the soft effect of a sonata. He even snored in the shade of a palm, and the gaiety of the proceedings in no way suffered.

It was only Colville who seemed uneasy and always urged any who were talking earnestly to keep out of earshot of the sleeping Englishman. Once or twice he took Barebone by the arm and led him to the other end of the room, for he was always the centre of the liveliest group and led the laughter there.

“Oh! but he is charming, my dear,” more than one guest whispered to Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, as they took their departure.

“He will do—he will do,” the men said with a new light of hope in their grave faces.

Nearly all had gone when John Turner at length woke up. Indeed, Colville threw a book upon the floor to disturb his placid sleep.

“I will come round to-morrow,” he said, bidding his hostess good night. “I have some papers for you to sign since you are determined to sell yourrentesand leave the money idle at your bank.”

“Yes. I am quite determined,” she answered, gaily, for she was before her time inasmuch as she was what is known in these days of degenerate speech as cock-sure.

And when John Turner, carrying a bundle of papers, presented himself at the Villa Cordouan next morning he found Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence sitting alone in the veranda.

“Dormer and his friend have left me to my own devices. They have gone away,” she mentioned, casually, in the course of conversation.

“Suddenly?”

“Oh no,” she answered, carelessly, and wrote her name in a clear firm hand on the document before her. And John Turner looked dense.

The Marquis de Gemosac was sitting at the open window of the little drawing-room in the only habitable part of the château. From his position he looked across the courtyard toward the garden where stiff cypress-trees stood sentry among the mignonette and the roses, now in the full glory of their autumn bloom.

Beyond the garden, the rough outline of the walls cut a straight line across the distant plains, which melted away into the haze of the marsh-lands by the banks of the Gironde far to the westward.

The Marquis had dined. They dined early in those days in France, and coffee was still served after the evening meal.

The sun was declining toward the sea in a clear copper-coloured sky, but a fresh breeze was blowing in from the estuary to temper the heat of the later rays.

The Marquis was beating time with one finger, and within the room, to an impromptu accompaniment invented by Juliette, Barebone was singing:

C’est le Hasard, Qui, tôt ou tard, Ici-bas nous seconde; Car, D’un bout du monde A l’autre bout, Le Hasard seul fait tout.

He broke off with a laugh in which Juliette’s low voice joined.

“That is splendid, mademoiselle,” he cried, and the Marquis clapped his thin hands together.

Un tel qu’on vantait Par hasard était D’origine assez mince; Par hasard il plut, Par hasard il fut Baron, ministre et prince: C’est le Hasard, Qui, tôt ou tard, Ici bas nous seconde; Car, D’un bout du monde A l’autre bout, Le Hasard seul fait tout.

“There—that is all I know. It is the only song I sing.”

“But there are other verses,” said Juliette, resting her hands on the keys of the wheezy spinet which must have been a hundred years old. “What are they about?”

“I do not know, mademoiselle,” he answered, looking down at her. “I think it is a love-song.”

She had pinned some mignonette, strong scented as autumn mignonette is, in the front of her muslin dress, and the heavy heads had dragged the stems to one side. She put the flowers in order, slowly, and then bent her head to enjoy the scent of them.

“It scarcely sounds like one,” she said, in a low and inquiring voice. The Marquis was a little deaf. “Is it all chance then?”

“Oh yes,” he answered, and as he spoke without lowering his voice she played softly on the old piano the simple melody of his song. “It is all chance, mademoiselle. Did they not teach you that at the school at Saintes?”

But she was not in a humour to join in his ready laughter. The room was rosy with the glow of the setting sun, she breathed the scent of the mignonette at every breath, the air which she had picked out on the spinet in unison with his clear and sympathetic voice had those minor tones and slow slurring from note to note which are characteristic of the gay and tearful songs of southern France and all Spain. None of which things are conducive to gaiety when one is young.

She glanced at him with one quick turn of the head and made no answer. But she played the air over again—the girls sing it to this day over their household work at Farlingford to other words—with her foot on the soft pedal. The Marquis hummed it between his teeth at the other end of the room.

“This room is hot,” she exclaimed, suddenly, and rose from her seat without troubling to finish the melody. “And that window will not open, mademoiselle; for I have tried it,” added Barebone, watching her impatient movements.

“Then I am going into the garden,” she said, with a sharp sigh and a wilful toss of the head. It was not his fault that the setting sun, against which, as many have discovered, men shut their doors, should happen to be burning hot or that the window would not open. But Juliette seemed to blame him for it or for something else, perhaps. One never knows. Barebone did not follow her at once, but stood by the window talking to the Marquis, who was in a reminiscent humour. The old man interrupted his own narrative, however.

“There,” he cried, “is Juliette on that wall overhanging the river. It is where the English effected a breach long ago, my friend—you need not smile, for you are no Englishman—and the château has only been taken twice through all the centuries of fighting. There! She ventures still farther. I have told her a hundred times that the wall is unsafe.”

“Shall I go and warn her the hundred-and-first time?” asked Loo, willing enough.

“Yes, my friend, do. And speak to her severely. She is only a child, remember.”

“Yes—I will remember that.”

Juliette did not seem to hear his approach across the turf where the goats fed now, but stood with her back toward him, a few feet below him, actually in that breach effected long ago by those pestilential English. They must have prized out the great stones with crowbars and torn them down with their bare hands.

Juliette was looking over the vineyards toward the river, which gleamed across the horizon. She was humming to herself the last lines of the song:

D’un bout du monde A l’autre bout, Le Hasard seul fait tout.

She turned with a pretty swing of her skirts to gather them in her hand.

“You must go no farther, mademoiselle,” said Loo.

She stopped, half bending to take her skirt, but did not look back. Then she took two steps downward from stone to stone. The blocks were half embedded in the turf and looked ready to fall under the smallest additional weight.

“It is not I who say so, but your father who sent me,” explained the admonisher from above.

“Since it is all chance—” she said, looking downward.

She turned suddenly and looked up at him with that impatience which gives way in later life to a philosophy infinitely to be dreaded when it comes; for its real name is Indifference.

Her movements were spasmodic and quick as if something angered her, she knew not what; as if she wanted something, she knew not what.

“I suppose,” she said, “that it was chance that saved our lives that night two months ago, out there.”

And she stood with one hand stretched out behind her pointing toward the estuary, which was quiet enough now, looking up at him with that strange anger or new disquietude—it was hard to tell which—glowing in her eyes. The wind fluttered her hair, which was tied low down with a ribbon in the mode named “à la diable” by some French wit with a sore heart in an old man’s breast. For none other could have so aptly described it.

“All chance, mademoiselle,” he answered, looking over her head toward the river.

“And it would have been the same had it been only Marie or Marie and Jean in the boat with you?”

“The boat would have been as solid and the ropes as strong.”

“And you?” asked the girl, with a glance from her persistent eyes.

“Oh no!” he answered, with a laugh. “I should not have been the same. But you must not continue to stand there, mademoiselle; the wall is unsafe.”

She shrugged her shoulders and stood with half-averted face, looking down at the vineyards which stretched away to the dunes by the river. Her cheeks were oddly flushed.

“Your father sent me to say so,” continued Loo, “and if he sees that you take no heed he will come himself to learn why.”

Juliette gave a curt laugh and climbed the declivity toward him. The argument was, it seemed, a sound one. When she reached his level he made a step or two along the path that ran round the enceinte—not toward the house, however—but away from it. She accepted the tacit suggestion, not tacitly, however.

“Shall we not go and tell papa we have returned without mishap?” she amended, with a light laugh.

“No, mademoiselle,” he answered. It was his turn to be grave now and she glanced at him with a gleam of satisfaction beneath her lids. She was not content with that, however, but wished to make him angry. So she laughed again and they would have quarrelled if he had not kept his lips firmly closed and looked straight in front of him.

They passed between the unfinished ruin known as the Italian house and the rampart. The Italian house screened them from the windows of that portion of the ancient stabling which the Marquis had made habitable when he bought back the château of Gemosac from the descendant of an adventurous republican to whom the estate had been awarded in the days of the Terror. A walk of lime-trees bordered that part of the garden which lies to the west of the Italian house, and no other part was visible from where Juliette paused to watch the sun sink below the distant horizon. Loo was walking a few paces behind her, and when she stopped he stopped also. She sat down on the low wall, but he remained standing.

Her profile, clear-cut and delicate with its short chin and beautifully curved lips, its slightly aquiline nose and crisp hair rising in a bold curve from her forehead, was outlined against the sky. He could see the gleam of the western light in her eyes, which were half averted. While she watched the sunset, he watched her with a puzzled expression about his lips.

He remembered perhaps the Marquis’s last words, that Juliette was only a child. He knew that she could in all human calculation know nothing of the world; that at least she could have learned nothing of it in the convent where she had been educated. So, if she knew anything, she must have known it before she went there, which was impossible. She knew nothing, therefore, and yet she was not a child. As a matter of fact, she was the most beautiful woman Loo Barebone had ever seen. He was thinking that as she sat on the low wall, swinging one slipper half falling from her foot, watching the sunset, while he watched her and noted the anger slowly dying from her eyes as the light faded from the sky. That strange anger went down, it would appear, with the sun. After the long silence—when the low bars of red cloud lying across the western sky were fading from pink to grey—she spoke at last in a voice which he had never heard before, gentle and confidential.

“When are you going away?” she asked.

“To-night.”

And he knew that the very hour of his departure was known to her already.

“And when will you come back?”

“As soon as I can,” he answered, half-involuntarily. There was a turn of the head half toward him, something expectant in the tilt at the corner of her parted lips, which made it practically impossible to make any other answer.

“Why?” she asked, in little more than a whisper—then she broke into a gay laugh and leapt off the wall. She walked quickly past him.

“Why?” she repeated over her shoulder as she passed him. And he was too quick for her, for he caught her hand and touched it with his lips before she jerked it away from him.

“Because you are here,” he answered, with a laugh. But she was grave again and looked at him with a queer searching glance before she turned away and left him standing in the half-light—thinking of Miriam Liston.

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