Bobby Clyffurde—immaculately dressed in fine cloth coat and satin breeches, with fine Mechlin lace at throat and wrist, and his light brown hair tied at the nape of the neck with a big black bow—came down presently to the reception room. He found the place silent and deserted.
But the stately apartment looked more cosy and home-like than usual. A cheerful fire was burning in the monumental hearth and the soft light of the candles fixed in sconces round the walls tempered to a certain degree that bare and severe look of past grandeur which usually hung upon every corner of the old château.
Clyffurde went up to the tall hearth. He rested his hand on the ledge of the mantel and leaning his forehead against it he stared moodily into the fire.
Thoughts of all that he had learned in the past few hours, of the new chapter in the book of the destinies of France, begun a few days ago in the bay of Jouan, crowded in upon his mind. What difference would the unfolding of that new chapter make to the destinies of the Comte de Cambray and of Crystal? What had Fate in store for the bold adventurer who was marching across France with a handful of men to reconquer a throne and remake an empire? what had she in store for the stiff-necked aristocrat of the old regime who still believed that God himself had made special laws for the benefit of one class of humanity, and that He had even created them differently to the rest of mankind?
And what had Fate in store for the beautiful, delicate girl whose future had been so arbitrarily settled by two men—father and lover—one the buyer, the other the seller of her exquisite person, the shrine of her pure and idealistic soul—and bargained for by father and lover as the price of so many acres of land—a farm—a château—an ancestral estate?
Father and lover were sitting together even now discussing values—the purchase price—"You give me back my lands, I will give you my daughter!" Blood money! soul money! Clyffurde called it as he ground his teeth together in impotent rage.
What folly it was to care! what folly to have allowed the tendrils of his over-sensitive heart to twine themselves round this beautiful girl, who was as far removed from his destiny as were the ambitions of his boyhood, the hopes, the dreams which the hard circumstances of fate had forced him to bury beneath the grave-mound of rigid and unswerving duty.
But what a dream it had been, this love for Crystal de Cambray! It had filled his entire soul from the moment when first he saw her—down in the garden under an avenue of ilex trees which cast their mysterious shadows over her; her father had called to her and she had come across to where he—Clyffurde—stood silently watching this approaching vision of loveliness which never would vanish from his mental gaze again.
Even at that supreme moment, when her blue eyes, her sweet smile, the exquisite grace of her took possession of his soul, even then he knew already that his dream could have but one awakening. She was already plighted to another, a happier man, but even if she were free, Crystal would never have bestowed a thought upon the stranger—the commonplace tradesman, whose only merit in her sight lay in his friendship with another gallant English gentleman.
And knowing this—when he saw her after that, day after day, hour after hour—poor Bobby Clyffurde grew reconciled to the knowledge that the gates of his Paradise would for ever be locked against him: he grew contented just to peep through those gates; and the Angel who was on guard there, holding the flaming sword of caste prejudice against him, would relent at times and allow him to linger on the threshold and to gaze into a semblance of happiness.