“There were people in it formerly,” insinuated grandfather.
“Formerly—a good many years ago.”
Grandfather appeared to hesitate as to continuing the conversation, but then resumed:
“Yes—a good many years ago. But you and I were not born to-day. Tell me, don’t you remember a lady?”
I at once thought of the lady in white with the cherries in her hat, and I summed up her figure in that clearing, at the door of the pavilion. My imagination was already at work upon this new theme.
“Oh,” said the old man, before swallowing the spoonful that he held in his hand—“as for women, I despise them.”
A gleam of rage shot across grandfather’s eyes, and I thought he was going to overset the old man and his pot. He at once cut short the conversation without another word. But as he turned away he took me to witness the beauty of the place.
“All the same, it’s sweet and wild here. The trees have hardly changed. They are all that is left.”
I never learned the adventure of the pavilion. But one day when we were passing the colonel’s tottering château another memory, less direct no doubt, awoke in his mind and without preparation he began:
“They called her the beautiful Alixe.”