"Sir, could I help it? The sun shines at Stonehanger."
Nance was silent and thoughtful when De Rothan had gone. She cleared the tea things away, while Anthony Durrell sat on the couch by the window and filled the bowl of a long clay pipe.
"Who is that man, father?"
"De Rothan? An exile, a French aristocrat. He waits for the return of King Louis."
Durrell showed the Jesuitical spirit in his belief that the end justified the means.
"Has he been long in Sussex?"
"No, not very long. Otherwise you would have seen him before."
"Where does he live?"
"He has rented an old house away yonder over the ridge?"
It was on Nance's tongue to speak of that night when she had heard De Rothan's voice in her father's room. But some impulse drove the words back. She went put with the tray, leaving her father to dream impossible dreams of an impossible future.