“But one thing I am resolved upon,” said Francezka. “However happy I may be—and I am at this moment so happy I can scarcely forbear to sing—I danced this morning in my bedroom for very joy—I say no matter how happy I may be, I shall try to do some good in the world. At least I can make gifts.”
“Yes,” I answered, “that is the cheapest form of goodness. You give away what would else be in your way.” An ungallant speech, but made with a purpose.
Francezka looked at me angrily for a moment, then smiled and took my hand in her two velvet palms.
“Babache, you are like a chestnut bur, sometimes—but 159 I love you—and I shall always heed what you tell me. Can I do more?”
She then rose and we walked about the garden, and looked down at the lake, still darkly shaded by the cedars on the brink, although the sun was now blazing in the east. We spoke not much. Francezka’s joy seemed to have grown quieter, if more intense. In the pauses of our talk, I found the lake had a voice—a voice like itself, sad. There was some subterranean outlet which gave a motion and a sound to the water, and this sound was a mournful one. Francezka stopped and called my attention to it.
“I remember that moan of the lake,” she said—“or I think I remember it—as Monsieur Gaston Cheverny thought he remembered the inscription on the statue.”
“Yonder comes Gaston, now,” I said.
“No,” said she, sweeping her glance toward a figure afar off, descending the steps of the terrace. “It is Monsieur Regnard Cheverny.”
“And here is the other Cheverny,” said Gaston’s voice behind us.
He did not look particularly happy; the splendors of the château of Capello were in marked contrast to his own modest house, the Manoir Cheverny, which lay a mile or two away.