"I beg your pardon!" said Lord Raincy, "I recognize that what you say is true. I am not sure, however, whether I can afford to let Louis go. But perhaps you came back from France to suggest as much to me."
Julian Wemyss laughed for the first time, a clear light-running laugh very pleasant to hear.
"I own I had it in my mind," he said, "all this night-hawking and saving of entrapped damsels is apt to make a boy romantic. Well, no harm for a while, I say. But if you follow my thought and excuse it—'tis not enough to set up house upon. I have no doubt that your grandson thinks himself over head and ears in love with my niece. What Patsy thinks I do not know—probably that young men were created for that purpose and that one is very like another."
"At his age I should certainly have been most deucedly in love with the lady," said the Earl.
"Just so," quoth Julian. "Now I do not know what plans you have for the future of the lad. I do not know Adam's mind. But even if your ideas happened to agree, which is unlikely—it would be a thousand times better for the young people to see something of life first. Let them have three years apart, meeting other people, getting little electric shocks which will surprise them amazingly, and then if you and Adam agree and the young people continue of a stable mind—why, there will be so much the less danger of their House of Life coming about their ears afterwards!"
The morning after the three Wise Men had sat in council together in the castle dining-room, Patsy Ferris and Louis Raincy climbed over opposite high walls and dropped almost simultaneously, and as naturally as ripe fruit falls, into the old orchard of Raincy. In the midst of the walled enclosure stood the marble mausoleum of the family, a heavily domed structure, drowned among high trees, through the narrow windows of which tombs and statues could be seen, and more than one De Raincy in his chain mail with his head on a marble pillow, his hands with the finger-tips joined, and a favourite dog at his feet.
The keys of the enclosure were in the Earl's own coffer, and the trees being too old for valuable fruit, the gardeners never went there, except once a year after the falling of the leaves, "to tidy up a bit, because one never knows what may happen," as old Steven the head gardener said. Even then the Earl came, and, sitting on a chair, surveyed their labours jealously, before locking up after them and going in to put away the key in its place for another year.
Patsy and Louis did not greet each other, though they had not met that morning. In the house one said, "Good morning," "I hope you passed a good night," and silly things like that, but not in the green shade of the old orchard. A weeping willow had been turned over in some winter gale many years ago, but had nevertheless managed to go on growing in its new position. It lay like a feathery plume along the side of the Raincy mausoleum. It was not the first time that Louis and Patsy had utilized it as a convenient seat.
The red squirrel who lived in one of the high pines dropped the husks of the larch tassels on which he was fond of browsing, upon their heads. But he did not chatter at them any more. He recognized a not remote kinship with people who had sense enough to come here to be out of the way, and he said as much to his own mate who was lying lazily curled in a big nest high up the bole of the pine which overtopped the white marble roof of the little chapel and looked clear away to sea and back to the towers of Castle Raincy.