Grandmamma moved toward the open battants of the glass doors to call Mademoiselle, but arrested her steps to answer the interrogation which rose in the eyes, but never reached the lips, of the little Marquise. “I have said, my dear, that we never met again. Whether Monsieur Angus Dunbar was nobler and stronger than other men—whether I was braver and purer than others of my sex—this was a question which never came to the test. Fate kept us apart, and something in which Monsieur le Curé, and perhaps ourselves, would recognize the hand of Heaven!�
Grandmamma went out through the glass doors and stood upon the perron, breathing the delicious air. The sun was drowning in a sea of molten gold, the sweet clamor of the horns came from an island in the shallow river. “Gone to the water! Gone to the water!� they played.... And then the death of the boar was sounded in the hallali. But a nobler passion than that of the hunter, who follows and slays for the mere momentary lust of possession, shone in the exquisite old face that lifted to the sunset the yearning of a deathless love.
II
The boar, a ragot, had met his end at the point of the Marquis’s hunting knife, an ancestral couteau de chasse with a blade about three feet long. The field had dispersed, one or two of the valets de chien gone after the missing hounds, leading the decoy dogs on leashes. Afternoon tea at the château was a very lively affair, the clatter of tongues, cups, and teaspoons almost deafening. A cuirassier, whose polished boot had suffered abrasion from the tusk of the wounded animal, recounted his adventure to a circle of sympathetic ladies. A fire of beech logs blazed on the wide hearth, the leaping flames playing a color symphony, from peacock green to sapphire, from ruby to orange, dying into palest lemon-yellow, leaping up in lilac, deepening to violet, and so da capo.... The silver andirons had sphinx heads adorned with full-bottomed periwigs of the period of Louis le Grand.... The exquisite Watteaus and Bouchers, set in the paneling—painted white because the little Marquise had found oak so triste—shone with a subdued splendor. The perfume of fine tobacco, green tea, and many roses, loaded the atmosphere, producing a mild intoxication in the brain of the tall, fair, well-dressed young fellow, unmistakably British, whom a servant had announced as Monsieur Brown....
“Monsieur Brown?� Monsieur de Courvaux read the card passed over to him by his wife. “Who under the sun is Monsieur Brown?�
“Fie, Frédéric!� rebuked the little Marquise. “It is the English tutor!�
Then they rose together and welcomed the newcomer with hospitable warmth. Charny les Bois was hideously difficult of access; the railway from the junction at which one had to change was a single line, and a perfect disgrace. Monsieur de Courvaux had long intended to bring the question—a burning one—before the proper authorities. Both Monsieur and Madame were horrified to realize that Monsieur Brown had walked from the station, where cabs were conspicuous by their absence. A conveyance had been ordered to be sent, but at the last moment it was wanted for the hunt. Monsieur Brown had hunted in England, of course?
Mr. Brown admitted that he had followed the hounds in several counties. Looking at the new tutor’s square shoulders, sinewy frame, long, well-made limbs, and firmly knit, supple hands, tanned like his face and throat by outdoor exercise, Monsieur de Courvaux did not doubt it. Brown came of good race, that was clear at the first glance. Harrow and Oxford had added the cachet of the high public school and the university. He had recommendations from the Duke of Atholblair, who mentioned him as the son of a dear old friend. And Atholblair was of the old régime, a great nobleman who chose his friends with discretion. Clearly Brown would do. His French was singularly pure; his English was the English of the upper classes. Absolutely, Brown was the thing. He was, he said, a Scotchman. The late Queen of England, to whom the little Marquise had the honor of being god-daughter’s daughter, had had a valuable attendant—also a Scotchman—of the name of Brown! Did Monsieur Brown happen to be any relation?
“Unhappily no, Madame!� said Mr. Brown, who seemed rather tickled by the notion. He took the next opportunity to laugh, and did it heartily. He was standing on the bear-skin before the fireplace, measuring an equal six feet of height with Monsieur de Courvaux, when he laughed, and several people, grouped about a central figure—that of the elder Madame de Courvaux, who sat upon a gilt fauteuil with her back to the great windows, beyond which the fires of the sunset were burning rapidly away—the people glanced round.
“What a handsome Englishman!� a lady whispered, a tiny brunette, with eyes of jet and ebony hair, who consequently adored the hazel-eyed, the tawny-haired, the tall of the opposite sex. Madame de Courvaux, superb in her laces and dove-colored silks, sat like a figure of marble. Under her broad white brow, crowned by its waves of gray-gold hair, her eyes, blue and brilliant still, fixed with an intensity of regard almost devouring upon the face of the new tutor, whom the Marquis, stepping forward, presented to his mother with due ceremony, and to whom, offering her white, jeweled hand, she said: