Again Raven smiled, but he avoided meeting Gabrielle's eye. He put his arm round her gently, and drew her to the seat near the fountain. Over this seat the tallest of the limes, still decked in half its wealth of leaves, cast its shadow; here the tale-telling moonlight would not reveal every varying expression of feature. The Baron could no longer meet those anxious, watchful eyes. They were dangerous--keen with the instinct of love, they might pierce through any mask; and yet there was a something which must yet, for a short season, be masked and hidden from them.
Arno sat for a while silent by Gabrielle's side. The great peace surrounding him soothed his weary spirit after all the tempests, all the din of the last few months. In his heart, too, the storm had spent itself. So long as it had been possible to fight, and to defend himself, he had remained in the arena, steady, strong, and to all appearance unmoved. How it had really been with him during that terrible time, when the two ruling passions of his life, pride and ambition, had been daily wounded, racked by a thousand mortifications, he alone knew. Now the battle and the strife were over, and the calm of a final, irrevocable resolve took from the remembrance of the past its deepest sting.
"Gabrielle, you have asked me nothing yet as to the cause of my overthrow," the Baron said, at length; "and yet you know the charges brought against me. Do you believe them?"
"Why should I ask? Of course, I knew at once the tale was false--a false and wicked calumny."
"So you, at least, believe in me," said Raven, with a deep breath of relief.
"I have never for an instant doubted you. But why do you bear the accusation in silence? Why do you not meet and utterly crush it? Even for your own sake you are bound to repel so foul a charge."
"I have publicly declared the statement which has been given to the world to be absolutely devoid of truth. You see how my word has been believed. I can no more bring forward proofs than they can who accuse me. One man, and only one, could have cleared me entirely, and he has long been in his grave. That man was your grandfather."
"My grandfather!" said Gabrielle, in surprise. "He died when I was quite a child, but I have always heard from my parents that you were his favourite and his confidential friend."
Raven mused awhile in silence. Then he went on:
"His was an exceptional nature. Perhaps that was why we understood each other so well, for I myself have never accepted common prejudices for the rule and guidance of my life. He, indeed, was born to the eminence I had laboriously to attain. An aristocrat through and through, he yet possessed sufficient impartiality to recognise talent and force of character wherever he found them, or however they might be employed. I, above all, have cause to know this. It was no small thing for the proud and wealthy nobleman, for the all-powerful Minister to accord his daughter's hand to a young middle-class official who had yet to win for himself a name and a position. Your grandfather was well aware, indeed, that I should not fail to win these, and to no other man of my social status would he have given his daughter in marriage. To him I owe all my subsequent success. To the day of his death he was to me a father and a true friend, and yet I would that he had let me go my own way, that his hand had not forcibly diverted the course of my life. It led me upwards to the dreamed-of height, but the price I had to pay for its help was too onerous, too great."