The due was in course of payment when the young man suddenly drew away with an ejaculation. "What, M. le Curé, are you still here?" For a short, stout, cassocked figure was standing under the crystal chandelier regarding them with approbation.
"I wished," said the old priest benevolently, "to give my blessing to you, M. le Comte, if you will permit it, and to Madame la Comtesse also—though as yet a heretic—and so I retired until the others should be gone. But I have not heard what you were saying to each other, only I perceive that you are indeed a wedded pair, such as the Church approves, and I will give you the Church's blessing on your union. May it be sanctified with mutual love and regard, and made happy by many children, and ended only by a Christian death—Benedicat vos Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus!" He cut the air crosswise with his not overclean hand, and before the astonished couple could find speech, had hurried from the room.
"Mort de ma vie, he has an assurance, our old curé!" exclaimed Armand, staring after him. "Darling, do not look so startled; it is a sort of pious compliment. But I am glad that he had the tact to wait until the rest had gone; not but what they would have been edified by it. Ces dames are all as devout as even the heart of Prosper could desire."
"Prosper?" questioned Horatia doubtfully.
"My cousin the Monsignor, who is said to be going to convert you, little heretic. Not that it is necessary; you would go straight to Heaven anyhow; and there you would pray for your poor husband grilling in Purgatory, would you not?—Come and sit by the fire in the hall and confide to me the ideas of your Church on the future state. Ours, you know, are very consoling to sinners like myself!"
Armand had long ago stopped talking nonsense, and lay silent on the floor, his head in Horatia's lap. Her fingers wandered slowly among the dark, fine, and waving hair. To come back to this dear intimacy after the chatter was bliss too profound for speech. The fire began to sink; the deerhound sighed, fixing melancholy eyes upon them, his nose along his paws, and Horatia, with the weight of Armand's body against her, felt that she should not know an hour more exquisite than this, which the great clock was tolling so relentlessly into eternity. And again she wondered why such happiness had been given to her, who had done so little to deserve it; for surely no woman before her had known so penetrating a joy!
Then suddenly she felt the gaze of the lady over the hearth, and looked up.
"I, too, have known," the enigmatical, half-closed eyes said to her—"and I have been dust and ashes these many years—and so shall you be, and so shall he." O, it was awfully, cruelly true! "Please God I die first!" she thought, and sliding her hand round Armand's neck kissed the head on her knee to register the hope.
Next morning, amid all the clatter of an early departure, she bent forward from the chaise for a last look at the place of so much happiness. The transient snow had melted, and the château stood as she had first seen it.
"I wonder shall I ever be so happy anywhere," she murmured. "Good-bye, dear house!"