LORIAN left Bellegarde at dawn. For once, he did not travel in his favorite bottle-green and silver. Good taste suggested that a plain black suit with his best Mechlin ruffles, was the appropriate wear in which to court destruction. Thus clad, he girded on Flamberge, and set out as merrily as might be, afoot: no horse could come to the top of Morven, where once had stood the grove of Virbius.
Florian journeyed first to Amneran, and went to a very retired cottage built of oak and plaster upon a stone foundation. Here was his last hope of aid, and of succour which he might accept without any detriment to the pride of Puysange, for this was the ill spoken-of home of his half-sister, Marie-Claire Cazaio. She was alone at her spinning when he came into the room. He took her hand. He kissed it.
“You told me once, dear Marie-Claire, a long while since, that in the end I would come to you in an old garden where dead leaves were falling, and would kiss your hand, and tell you I had loved you all my life. I wonder, Marie-Claire, if you remember that?”
“I have forgotten,” she said, “nothing.”
“You were wrong as to the garden and as to the dead leaves. But in all else you were right. This is the end, Marie-Claire. And in the end I fulfill your prophecy.”
She looked at him, for no brief while, with those small darkened eyes which seemed to see beyond him. “Yes, you are speaking the truth. I had thought that when this happened it would matter. And it does not matter.”
“Only one thing has mattered in all our lives, Marie-Claire. I was at Storisende last week. I remembered you and our youth.”
“And were you”—she smiled faintly,—“and were you properly remorseful?”
“No. I have regretted many of my doings. But I can find nowhere in me any of the highly requisite repentance for those of my actions which people would describe as criminal. I suppose it is because we of Puysange are so respectful of the notions of others that we do not commit crimes rashly. We enter into no illegal turpitude until rather careful reflection has assured us of its expediency. I, in any event, have sometimes been virtuous with unthinking levity, and with depressing upshots: but my vices, which my judgment had to endorse before prudence would venture on them, have resulted well enough. So I can regret no irregularities, and certainly not the happiness of our far-off youth.”
Again Marie-Claire was in no hurry to reply. When she spoke, it was without any apparent conviction either one way or the other. “Our happiness involved, they say, considerable misdoing.”