THE COST OF WINGS
AND OTHER STORIES

THE
COST OF WINGS
AND OTHER STORIES

BY
RICHARD DEHAN
AUTHOR OF
“ONE BRAVER THING,� “BETWEEN TWO THIEVES,� ETC.

NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1914, by
Frederick A. Stokes Company
All rights reserved

CONTENTS

THE COST OF WINGS

SHELDRICK, returning, refreshed and exhilarated, from a spin with a friend who had brought down a racing car of forty horse-power and an enthusiasm to match, found his wife sitting in the same chair, in the same attitude, as it seemed to him, in which he had left her, in the bare, dull sitting-room of their quarters at the Pavilion Hotel, on the edge of Greymouth Links, from which starting point Sheldrick, in fulfillment of his recent engagement with the Aero Club of France, had arranged to take wing for Cherbourg, wind and weather permitting, on the morrow.

It would be difficult exceedingly to imagine Caruso as an engineer or a bank manager, or in any capacity other than that of operatic star. It would be equally difficult to picture Shackleton as a side-splitting antic and quip-monger, or Pélissier in the rôle of the dauntless explorer. Sheldrick, the most recent idol of the flying world, was the type-ideal of the aviator.

Mathematician, engineer, meteorologist, and athlete, his tall, lightly built but muscular frame carried the head of an eagle. The wide forehead, sloping to the temples, the piercing prominently set eyes, the salient nose, and the wide, firm, deep-cut mouth characterizing the long-winged birds of powerful flight, were Sheldrick’s. His, too, the long, supple neck, the curiously deceptive shoulder slope that disguises depth of chest while his long arms looked as though, were they clothed with feathers, they might cleave the air; and his feet gripped the ground through the thin, soft boots he always wore, as the eagle’s talons grip the rock.

Perhaps he was not unaware of the suggested resemblance. He had certainly christened his recently completed monoplane “Aquila,� and had piloted her to victory in two minor events at the Moncaster Spring Flying Meeting in April of that year, and at the Nismes Concours des Aviateurs of three weeks before had carried off the Grand Prix of 25,000 francs for the longest flight under favorable weather conditions. And at the Club dinner following the presentation of the prizes, Sheldrick, flushed with conquest and congratulations, had given that pledge whereby the soul of the woman who yet loved him was wrung to torture anew.

“After all that I have borne,� Mrs. Sheldrick had said to herself, sitting in her hideous red moreen-covered chair by the green Venetian-blinded window of the staring hotel sitting-room—“after three years of agony, silently, patiently endured—after all his promises, I am still upon the rack.�

She looked rather like it as she sat by the window, the center one of three that gave a view across the gray-green links, and the gray-brown beach of smooth, sliding pebbles that gave place to the gray-white, throbbing water of the English Channel. And the white, drawn face that masked her frenzy of anguish, and the dark-gray, haunted eyes through which her suffering spirit looked, greeted her husband as he burst into the room, fresh from his banquet of speed and clean, salt, buoyant air, and sympathetic, enthusiastic companionship, like an unexpected douche of ice water.

“Haven’t you been out?�

Sheldrick uttered the words recorded, upon a pause implying the swallowing of others less neutrally amiable. And his face, which had already clouded, darkened sullenly as his wife replied: “I have traveled some distance since you left here with your friend.�

“Where have you been?� asked Sheldrick unwillingly, as a man who suspects that the question may open some unwelcome topic.

Mrs. Sheldrick looked at her husband full; and, though it had seemed to him that he had read the book of her beauty from preface to finis, there was something new to him in her regard as she answered:

“I have gone over in memory every week of the last three years that we have spent together, Edgar; and the road has been a rough and stony one, without one green patch of grass to rest on by the wayside, or one refreshing spring at which to drink. But I was patient while I plodded after you, because I saw an end to what I was enduring. Now it seems that I am mistaken. It is only my endurance that is at an end.�

“Why do you talk in allegory, Ella?� Sheldrick broke out impatiently. He threw down his leather motoring cap with the talc eye shields upon the sofa, and pitched his heavy overcoat upon a chair in a corner of the ugly room, and let his long, lithe body down into a hideous Early Victorian plush armchair beside the empty fireplace, where nothing crackled but some fantastically bordered strips of red and green gelatine paper, shuddering under the influence of a powerful chimney draught. “I’m not an imaginative man,� he went on. “Even if my mind were not occupied with a dozen affairs of supreme urgency I should still boggle at interpreting your cryptic utterances. If you want them understood, make them to some minor poet at a garden party or an At Home. You’ve stacks of invitations from the nicest people to all sorts of functions ever since I pulled off those two events at Moncaster and the Grand Prix at Nismes. And now that it’s May, and the season in full swing, you might be having no end of a capital time at home in London instead of——� She interrupted him with a passionate gesture.

“I have no home!�

“No?� said Sheldrick coolly, leaning back his head against the knobby back of the Early Victorian armchair.

“No!� said Mrs. Sheldrick, and her passion seemed to dash itself against and break upon the man’s composure as a wave beats and breaks upon a rock. “It was a home, once, when you were working partner in the firm of Mallard, Mallard and Sheldrick, Manufacturers of Automobiles; and the life you led was a normal, ordinary, everyday life, and the risks you ran were everyday, ordinary risks, such as a woman who loved you—note that I say who loved you—might bear without going mad or dying of terror. But it is a prison now. I cannot breathe in it. Even when you are there with me—and when every postman’s knock, or telegraph boy’s ring, or telephone message has for the moment ceased to be fraught with hideous, often-dreamed-of, never-forgotten possibilities ... when each newsboy’s voice, yelling in the streets, has temporarily ceased to be the voice of Fate for me—it is no longer home! It is a caravanserai, from which Hope and Content and Peace of Mind may go out before the next day’s dawning, leaving the door open that Death and Despair may the more freely enter in!�

“Ella!� exclaimed Sheldrick, looking at her open-eyed. She had always been such a quiet, calm, self-possessed woman, that now, as she rose up out of her chair suddenly, as though she had been prodded with a bayonet, she was strange and new, and rather awe-inspiring. As she stood before him, her passion-breathing face an ivory cameo between the drooping folds of her rich blue-black hair, her gray eyes glittering fiercely between the narrowed lids under the straight black brows, her lips two bitterly straightened lines of scarlet showing the gleaming teeth, her firm chin implacable in its set upon the dainty cravat of muslin and black silk ribbon, her slight bosom panting fiercely under her bodice folds, her slender limbs rigid beneath the sheath-fitting gown of silken chestnut-colored cloth, the man, her husband, looked at her more attentively than he had looked for years.

“Ella, what is the matter? What has upset you like this? If there is anything I can do to put things right, why not tell me, and—and——�

Sheldrick’s voice faltered, and his eyes looked away from his wife’s as he saw the reviving hope leap desperately into her face. It died instantly, leaving her gray eyes more somber, and the lines of her scarlet, parted lips more bitter than before.

“Ah, yes!� she said. “Why not tell you what you know already, and be coaxed and patted into compliance and meek, patient submission for the hundredth time! You will kiss me good-bye to-morrow morning, if the weather permits of your starting, and make this flight. It is to be the last, the very last, like the others that have gone before it; it is only so much more daring, only so much more risky, only so much more dangerous than the things that other aviators have dared and risked and braved. If it blows from the north you will not dream of making the venture—the jagged rocks and shoals, and the towering, greedy seas of the Channel Islands threaten things too grim. You will wait, and I with you—oh, my God!—for a favorable wind. Your successes at Brookfields and at Nismes have made the ‘Aquila’ patent worth a moderate fortune; they are turning out replicas of her at your workshops as rapidly as they can make them—your manager took on twenty more skilled hands only last week. You have done what you set out to do; we are freed from poverty for the rest of our lives—we might live happily, peacefully together somewhere, if this unnatural love of peril had not bitten you to the bone. ‘One more contest,’ you will keep on saying; ‘one more revenge I am bound to give this and that or the other man whom I have beaten, or who has challenged me.’� Her bosom heaved, and the ivory paleness of her face was darkened with a rush of blood. “Honor is involved. You are bound in honor to keep your word to others, but free to deceive, to defraud, to cheat and lie to—your wife!�

“Take care what you’re saying!�

Sheldrick leaped out of his chair, fiery red and glaring angrily. Mrs. Sheldrick looked at him out of her glittering, narrowed eyes, and laughed, and her laugh was ugly to hear.

“Your wife! Did you ever realize what it meant to me to be your wife? When we were married, and for eighteen months after that! Heaven upon earth! Have you ever dreamed what sort of life began for me when you were first bitten by this craze of flying, three years ago? Hell—sheer, unmitigated hell! To the public I am a woman in an ulster, or in a dust cloak and a silk motor veil, thick to hide the ghastly terror in my face!—a woman who kisses you before the start, and keeps pace with your aeroplane in an automobile through the long-distance flights, with what the English newspaper men describe as ‘unswerving devotion,’ and the French press correspondents term ‘a tenderness of the most touching.’ They are wrong! I am not conscious of any special devotion. The springs of tenderness have frozen in me. I am like every other spectator on the course, possessed, body and soul, by the secret, poignant, momentary expectation of seeing a man hurled to a horrible death. Only the man is—my husband! Now I remember this, Edgar, but a day will dawn—an hour will come to me—is coming as surely as there is a God in heaven—when he will be no more than the flying man who may possibly be killed!�

There was silence in the room, and the hoarse, dry sound that broke it was not a sob. It came from Sheldrick, a single utterance, like the sound of something breaking.

“I—understand!�

There was no response, for the woman, having unsealed and poured out the last drop of her vials of bitterness and wrath, was dumb. Sheldrick added, after a long pause:

“What do you ask? That I should give up the attempt to fly to Cherbourg? That I should break the engagement with the Aero Club—withdraw the challenge given to M. Ledru? Is that what you demand?�

She said with a hopeless gesture:

“I ask nothing! I demand nothing!�

Sheldrick muttered an oath. But in his soul he was yielding. “Aquila No. 1,� “Aquila No. 2,� and “Aquila No. 3� were dear to his soul. But he had awakened to the fact that his dearest possession was the love of his wife. And he had been killing it by inches. He met her eyes now—the stern gray eyes that had learned to see him as he was and look on the bare realities of life, shorn of its love glamour, and muttered:

“It is true. I have promised over and over.... And I owe it to you to take no more risks, even more than if we had a living child to.... Where are those cable-forms?�

He strode to the ink-splashed writing table between the windows, and routed the bundle of greenish papers out of the frowsy blotting book, and dipped the blunt pen into the thick, dirty ink, and wrote:

“To Ledru, Hôtel National, Cherbourg, France.
“Unavoidably compelled break engagement——�

He was struck by a sudden idea, ceased writing, and left the room, going into the adjoining bedroom. His wife, standing dumb and frozen on the gaudy hearthrug near the empty grate, heard him rummaging for something. He came back in a few minutes with a heavy brow and preoccupied look, and took a leather strap from the pocket of the heavy overcoat he had thrown upon the sofa. With this he went back into the bedroom. The door handle rattled as though something were being hitched about it, the stout door groaned and creaked under a violent pull from the other side, there was a horrible, suggestive crack, and a stifled oath from Sheldrick. Next moment he was back in the room, dipping the blunt pen into the bad ink, and finishing the cablegram:

“Left wrist badly sprained—Sheldrick, Pavilion Hotel, Links, Greymouth, England.�

Having finished writing, he brought the filled form to his wife. She read, and looked at him in eloquent silence. And, in answer to the question in her eyes, he held out his left hand, already swollen and purple, and with a swelling of the dimensions of a cricket ball, indicating the dislocated joint. A cry broke from her:

“Oh! how could you....�

“It was the easiest way,� said Sheldrick, flushed and scowling. “Call me a coward, if you like. I deserve it—as well as the other names!� He rang the bell, and fished with the sound hand for silver in a trouser pocket.

“We’ll send the cable now,� he said.

She bit her lips, that were no longer scarlet, and went to the blotted blotter, dipped the worn pen into the blobby ink, and made an alteration in the cablegram. Then she showed it to him, and the message ran:

“To Ledru, Hôtel National, Cherbourg, France.
“Unavoidably compelled postpone engagement. Left wrist badly sprained.—Sheldrick, Pavilion Hotel, Links, Greymouth, England.�

As Sheldrick looked at Mrs. Sheldrick, in intent amazement, the bell was answered by a German waiter. Mrs. Sheldrick took the silver out of Sheldrick’s sound hand, dismissed the attendant to dispatch the message, closed and locked the door of the sitting-room against intruders, and then went quickly to her husband and fell upon his breast. He clasped her with his sound arm as she broke into passionate weeping, and only whispered when at last she lifted her face to his:

“Why ‘postponed’?�

“Because,� whispered Ella Sheldrick, with her cheek against her husband’s, “because you are not chained to your rock, my darling, with iron bars between you and the free fields of space, forged by the wife you love. You are free to give and take as many challenges as you desire. When you have finished ‘Aquila No. 4,’ that shall be built with a seat for a passenger beside you, run what risks you choose, brave as many dangers as seem good to you; I will not say one word, provided that I share the risk and brave the danger too.�

This is why the successful aviator Sheldrick never flies without a passenger. And the story has a moral—of a kind.

A FADED ROMANCE

In Two Parts

I

THE ladies of the household at Charny les Bois usually sat in the library on sunny mornings. At the southern end of the long room, paneled in black walnut, and possessing a hooded stone fireplace of the fifteenth century, there was a bay, with wide glass doors opening upon a perron of wrought iron and copper work, which led down into the lovely garden—a piece of land originally reclaimed from the heart of the ancient beech forest, whose splendid somberness set off the dazzling whiteness of the château and made the parterres glow and sparkle like jewels—rubies, turquoises, emeralds, sapphires—poured out upon the green velvet lap of princess or courtesan.

The Marquis de Courvaux, lord of the soil and owner of the historic mansion, was absent. One must picture him leading the hunt through the forest alleys, attired in a maroon and yellow uniform of the most exquisite correctness, three-cocked hat, and immense spurred jack-boots, and accompanied by a field of fifty or sixty, of which every individual had turned out in a different costume: green corduroy knickerbockers with gold braid accompanying cut-away coats and jockey caps, and bowlers of English make, sported in combination with pink and leathers, adding much to the kaleidoscopic effect. Half a dozen cuirassiers from the neighboring garrison town were upon their London coach, driving a scratch four-in-hand and attired in full uniform; various vehicles, of types ranging from the capacious char-Ã -banc to the landaulette, were laden with ardent votaries of the chasse.

The distant fanfare of the horns sounding the ragot reached the ears of the ladies sewing in the library at the château. One of these ladies, detained by urgent nursery reasons from joining in the morning’s sport, was the young and pretty wife of the Marquis; the other, old as a high-bred French lady alone knows how to be, and still beautiful, was his mother. Over the high-arched cover of the great carved fireplace was her portrait by Varolan, painted at sixteen, in the full ball costume of 1870. One saw, regarding that portrait, that it was possible to be beautiful in those days even with a chignon and waterfall, even with panniers or bustle, and absurd trimmings of the ham-frill type. Perhaps some such reflection passed through the calm mind behind the broad, white, unwrinkled forehead of Madame de Courvaux, as she removed her gold spectacles and lifted her eyes, darkly blue and brilliant still, to the exquisite childish flower face of the portrait. The autumn breeze coming in little puffs between the open battants of the glass doors, savoring of crushed thyme, late violets, moss, bruised beech leaves, and other pleasant things, stirred the thick, waving, gold-gray tresses under the rich lace, a profusion of which, with the charming coquetry of a venerable beauty, the grandmamma of the chubby young gentleman upstairs in the nursery, the thirteen-year-old schoolboy on his hunting pony, and the budding belle but newly emancipated from her convent, was fond of wearing—sometimes tied under her still lovely chin, sometimes floating loosely over her shoulders.

“There again!� The younger Madame de Courvaux arched her mobile eyebrows and showed her pretty teeth as she bit off a thread of embroidery cotton. “The third time you have looked at that portrait within ten minutes! Tell me, do you think it is getting stained with smoke? In north winds this chimney does not always behave itself, and Frédéric’s cigars and pipes——� The speaker shrugged her charming shoulders. “But he is incorrigible, as thou knowest, Maman.�

“I was not thinking of Frédéric or the chimney.� The elder lady smiled, still looking upward at the girlish face overhead. “It occurred to me that forty years have passed since I gave Carlo Varolan the first sitting for that portrait. His studio in the Rue Vernet was a perfect museum of lovely things.... I was never tired of examining them.... My gouvernante fell asleep in a great tapestry chair.... Varolan drew a caricature of her—so laughable!—with a dozen strokes of the charcoal on the canvas, and then rubbed it all out with a grave expression that made me laugh more. I was only just sixteen, and going to be married in a fortnight.... And I could laugh like that!� The antique brooch of black pearls and pigeons’ blood rubies that fastened the costly laces upon the bosom of Madame la Marquise rose and fell at the bidding of a sigh.

“I cried for days and days before my marriage with Frédéric,� the little Marquise remarked complacently.

“And I should cry at the bare idea of not being married at all!� said a fresh young voice, belonging to Mademoiselle Lucie, who came up the steps from the garden with the skirt of her cambric morning frock full of autumn roses, her cheeks flushed to the hue of the pinkest La France. She dropped her pretty reverence to her grandmother, kissed her upon the hand, and her mother on the forehead, and turned her lapful of flowers out upon the table, where vases and bowls of Sèvres and China ware stood to receive them, ready filled with water. “You know I would, Grandmamma!�

“It is a mistake either to laugh or to weep; one should smile only, or merely sigh,� said Grandmamma, with the charming air of philosophy that so became her. “One should neither take life too much to heart, nor make a jest of it, my little Lucie.�

“Please go on with the story. Your gouvernante was asleep in the chair; Monsieur Varolan caricatured her. You were laughing at the drawing and at his droll face, as he rubbed it out, and then——�

“Then a gentleman arrived, and I did not laugh any more.� Grandmamma took up her work, a delicate, spidery web of tatting, and the corners of her delicately chiseled lips, pink yet as faded azalea blossoms, quivered a little. “He was staying at the British Embassy with his brother-in-law, who was Military Attaché, and whose name I have forgotten. He came to see his sister’s portrait; it stood framed upon the easel—oh! but most beautiful and stately, with the calm, cold gaze, the strange poetic glamour of the North. He, too, was fair, very tall, with aquiline features, and light hazel eyes, very piercing in their regard, and yet capable of expressing great tenderness. For Englishmen I have never cared, but Scotch gentlemen of high breeding have always appeared to me quite unapproachable in ton, much like the Bretons of old blood, with whom their type, indeed, has much in common. But I am prosing quite intolerably, it seems to me!� said Grandmamma, with a heightened tint upon her lovely old cheeks and an embarrassed laugh.

Both Lucie and the little Marquise cried out in protestation. Lucie, snipping dead leaves from her roses, wanted to know whether Monsieur Varolan had presented the strange Scotch gentleman to Grandmamma.

“He did. At first he seemed to hesitate, glancing toward Mademoiselle Binet. But she slept soundly, and, indeed, with cause, having over-eaten herself that day at the twelve o’clock breakfast upon duck stewed with olives, pastry, and corn salad. An excellent creature, poor Binet, but with the failings of ces gens-là , and you may be assured that I did not grudge her her repose while I conversed with Monsieur Angus Dunbar, who spoke French almost to perfection. How it was that I, who had been brought up by my mother with such absolute strictness, yielded to the entreaties of Monsieur Varolan, who was quite suddenly inspired with the idea of what afterward proved to be one of his greatest pictures, I cannot imagine,� said Grandmamma; “but it is certain that we posed together as the Lord of Nann and the Korrigan standing in the forest by the enchanted well. It would have been a terrible story to travel home to the Faubourg St. Germain, I knew, but Mademoiselle still slept sweetly, and out of girlish recklessness and gaieté de cœur I consented, and down came my long ropes of yellow hair, which had only been released from their schoolroom plait, and dressed in grown young-lady fashion six months before. Monsieur Varolan cried out, and clasped his hands in his impulsive southern way. Monsieur Dunbar said nothing—then; but by his eyes one could tell, child as one was, that he was pleased. But when Varolan’s sketch was dashed in, and the painter cried to us to descend from the model’s platform, Monsieur Dunbar leaned toward me and whispered, as he offered me his hand, ‘If the fairy had been as beautiful as you, Mademoiselle’—for Varolan had told him the story, and he had pronounced it to be the parallel of an antique Highland legend—‘had the fairy been as beautiful as you, the Lord of Nann would have forgotten the lady in the tower by the sea.’ He, as I have told you, my children, spoke French with great ease and remarkable purity; and something in the earnestness of his manner and the expression of his eyes—those light hazel, gleaming eyes�—Grandmamma’s delicate dove-colored silks rustled as she shuddered slightly—“caused me a thrill, but a thrill——�

“Young girls are so absurdly impressionable,� began the little Marquise, with a glance at Lucie. “I remember when our dancing master, hideous old M. Mouton, praised me for executing my steps with elegance, I would be in the seventh heaven.�

“But this man was neither hideous, old, nor a dancing master, my dear,� said Grandmamma, a little annoyed. She took up her tatting, which had dropped upon her silver-gray lap, as though the story were ended, and Lucie’s face fell.

“And is that all—absolutely all?� she cried.

“Mademoiselle Binet woke up, and we went home to the Faubourg St. Germain to five o’clock tea—then the latest novelty imported from London; and she overate herself again—upon hot honey cake buttered to excess—and spoiled her appetite for supper,� said Grandmamma provokingly.

“And you never saw Monsieur Varolan or Monsieur D ...—I cannot pronounce his name—again?�

“Monsieur Varolan I saw again, several times in fact, for the portrait required it; and Monsieur Dunbar, quite by accident, called at the studio on several of these occasions.�

“And Mademoiselle Binet? Did she always fall asleep in the tapestry chair?� asked the little Marquise, with arching eyebrows.

Grandmamma laughed, and her laugh was so clear, so sweet, and so mirthful that the almost living lips of the exquisite child portrayed upon the canvas bearing the signature of the dead Varolan seemed to smile in sympathy.

“No, but she was occupied for all that. Monsieur Varolan had found out her weakness for confectionery, and there was always a large dish of chocolate pralines and cream puffs for her to nibble at after that first sitting. Poor, good creature, she conceived an immense admiration for Varolan; and Monsieur Dunbar treated her with a grave courtesy which delighted her. She had always imagined Scotchmen as savages, painted blue and feeding upon raw rabbits, she explained, until she had the happiness of meeting him.�

“And he—what brought him from his bogs and mountains?� asked the little Marquise. “Was he qualifying for the diplomatic service, or studying art?�

Grandmamma turned her brilliant eyes calmly upon the less aristocratic countenance of her daughter-in-law. “He was doing neither. He was staying in Paris in attendance upon his fiancée, who had come over to buy her trousseau. I forget her name—she was the only daughter of a baronet of Leicestershire, and an heiress. The match had been made by her family. Monsieur Dunbar, though poor, being the cadet of a great family and heir to an ancient title—his brother, Lord Hailhope, having in early youth sustained an accident in the gymnasium which rendered him a cripple for life.�

“So a wife with a ‘dot’ was urgently required!� commented the little Marquise. “Let us hope she was not without esprit and a certain amount of good looks, in the interests of Monsieur Dunbar.�

“I saw her on the night of my first ball,� said Grandmamma, laying down her tatting and folding her delicate, ivory-tinted hands, adorned with a few rings of price, upon her dove-colored silk lap. “She had sandy hair, much drawn back from the forehead, and pale eyes of china-blue, with the projecting teeth which the caricatures of ‘Cham’ gave to all Englishwomen. Also, her waist was rather flat, and her satin boots would have fitted a sapeur; but she had an agreeable expression, and I afterward heard her married life with Monsieur Dunbar was fairly happy.�

“And Monsieur himself—was he as happy with her as—as he might have been, supposing he had never visited Paris—never called at the studio of Varolan?� asked the little Marquise, with a peculiar intonation.

Grandmamma’s rosary was of beautiful pearls. She let the shining things slide through her fingers meditatively as she replied:

“My daughter, I cannot say. We met at that ball—the last ball given at the Tuileries before the terrible events of the fifteenth of July. I presented Monsieur Dunbar to my mother. We danced together, conversed lightly of our prospects; I felt a serrement de cœur, and he, Monsieur Dunbar, was very pale, with a peculiar expression about the eyes and mouth which denoted violent emotion strongly repressed. I had noticed it when Monsieur de Courvaux came to claim my hand for the second State quadrille. He wore his uniform as Minister of Commerce and all his Orders.... His thick nose, white whiskers, dull eyes, and bent figure contrasted strangely with the fine features and splendid physique of Monsieur Dunbar. Ah, Heaven! how I shivered as he smiled at me with his false teeth, and pressed my hand within his arm.... He filled me with fear. And yet at heart I knew him to be good and disinterested and noble, even while I could have cried out to Angus to save me.... But I was whirled away. Everyone was very kind. The Empress, looking tall as a goddess, despotically magnificent in the plenitude of her charms, noticed me kindly. I danced with the Prince Imperial, a fresh-faced, gentle boy. Monsieur de Courvaux was much felicitated upon his choice, and Maman was pleased—that goes without saying. Thus I came back to Monsieur Dunbar. We were standing together in an alcove adorned with palms, admiring the porphyry vase, once the property of Catherine the Great, and given by the Emperor Alexander to the First Napoleon, when for the first time he took my hand. If I could paint in words the emotion that suddenly overwhelmed me!... It seemed as though the great personages, the distinguished crowds, the jeweled ladies, the uniformed men, vanished, and the lustres and girandoles went out, and Angus and I were standing in pale moonlight on the shores of a lake encircled by mountains, looking in each other’s eyes. It matters little what we said, but the history of our first meeting might have prompted the sonnet of Arvers.... You recall it:

“Mon cœur a son secret, mon âme a son mystère,

Un amour éternel dans un instant conçu:

Le mal est sans remède.�

“Sans remède for either of us. Honor was engaged on either side. So we parted,� said Grandmamma. “My bouquet of white tea-roses and ferns had lost a few buds when I put it in water upon reaching home.�

“And——�

“In three days I married Monsieur de Courvaux. As for Monsieur Dunbar——�

“Lucie,� said the little Marquise, “run down to the bottom of the garden and listen for the horns!�

“Monsieur Dunbar I never saw again,� said Grandmamma, with a smile, “and there is no need for Lucie to run into the garden. Listen! One can hear the horns quite plainly; the boar has taken to the open—they are sounding the débuché. What do you want, Lebas?�

The middle-aged, country-faced house-steward was the medium of a humble entreaty on the part of one Auguste Pichon, a forest keeper, that Madame the Marquise would deign to hear him on behalf of the young woman, his sister, of whom Monsieur le Curé had already spoken. This time, upon the exchange of a silent intelligence between the two elder ladies, Mademoiselle Lucie was really dismissed to the garden, and Pichon and his sister were shown in by Lebas.

Pichon was a thick-set, blue-bearded, vigorous fellow of twenty-seven, wearing a leather gun pad strapped over his blouse, and cloth gaiters. He held his cap in both hands against his breast as he bowed to his master’s mother and his master’s wife. His sister, a pale, sickly, large-eyed little creature, scarcely ventured to raise her abashed glance from the Turkey carpet as Pichon plucked at her cotton sleeve.

“We have heard the story from Monsieur le Curé,� cried the younger lady, “and both Madame la Marquise and myself are much shocked and grieved. Is it not so, Madame?�

Grandmamma surveyed the bending, tempest-beaten figure before her with a sternness of the most august, yet with pity and interest too.

“We did not anticipate when we had the pleasure of contributing a little sum to your sister’s dower, upon her marriage with the under-gardener, Pierre Michaud, that the union would be attended with anything but happiness.�

“Alas! Nor did I, Madame.... I picked out Michaud myself from half a dozen others. ‘Here’s a sound, hale man of sixty,’ thinks I, ‘will make the girl a good husband, and leave her a warm widow when he dies’; for he has a bit put by, as is well known. And she was willing when he asked her to go before the Maire and Monsieur le Curé and sign herself Michaud instead of Pichon. Weren’t you, girl?�

No answer from the culprit but a sob.

“So, as she was willing and Michaud was eager, the wedding came off. At the dance, for it’s a poor foot that doesn’t hop at a wedding, what happens? Latrace, Monsieur le Marquis’s new groom, drops in. He dances with the bride, drops a few sweet speeches in her ear. Crac! ’Tis like sowing mustard and cress.... Latrace scrapes acquaintance with Michaud—more fool he, with respect to the ladies’ presence, for when one has a drop of honey one doesn’t care to share with the wasp! Latrace takes to hanging about the cottage. Ninette, the silly thing, begins to gape at the moon, and when what might be expected to happen happens, Michaud turns her out of house and home. What’s more, keeps her dowry, to pay for his honor, says he. ‘Honor! leave honor to gentlemen; wipe out scores with a stick!’ says I, ‘and eat one’s cabbage soup in peace.’ But he’ll bolt the door and stick to the dowry, and Ninette may beg, or worse, for all he cares. And my wife flies out on the poor thing; and what to do with her may the good God teach me.... Madame will understand that who provides for her keeps two! And she so young, Madame, only seventeen!�

The little Marquise uttered a pitying exclamation, and over the face of the elder lady passed a swift change. The exquisite faded lips quivered, the brilliant eyes under the worn eyelids shone through a liquid veil of tears. Rustling in her rich neutral-tinted silks, Madame rose, went to the shrinking figure, and stooping from her stately height, kissed Ninette impulsively upon both cheeks.

“Poor child! Poor little one!� whispered Grandmamma; and at the caress and the whisper, the girl dropped upon her knees with a wild, sobbing cry, and hid her face in the folds of what seemed to her an angel’s robe. “Leave Ninette to us, my good Pichon,� said Grandmamma. “For the present the Sisters of the Convent at Charny will take her, all expenses being guaranteed by me, and when she is stronger we will talk of what is to be done.� She raised the crying girl, passing a gentle hand over the bowed head and the convulsed shoulders. “Life is not all ended because one has made one mistake!� said Grandmamma. “Tell Madame Pichon that, from me!�

Pichon, crushing his cap, bowed and stammered gratitude, and backed out, leading the girl, who turned upon the threshold to send one passionate glance of gratitude from her great, melancholy, black eyes at the beautiful stately figure with the gold-gray hair, clad in shining silks and costly lace. As the door closed upon the homely figures, the little Marquise heaved a sigh of relief.

“Ouf! Pitiable as it all is, one can hardly expect anything better. The standard of morality is elevated in proportion to the standard of rank, the caliber of intellect, the level of refinement. Do you not agree with me?�

Grandmamma smiled. “Are we of the upper world so extremely moral?�

The little Marquise pouted.

“Noblesse oblige is an admirable apothegm, but does it keep members of our order from the Courts of Divorce? My dear Augustine, reflect, and you will come to the conclusion that there is really very little difference in human beings. The texture of the skin, the shape of the fingernails, cleanliness, correct grammar, and graceful manners do not argue superior virtue, or greater probity of mind, or increased power to resist temptation, but very often the reverse. This poor girl married an uninteresting, elderly man at the very moment when her heart awakened at the sight and the voice of one whom she was destined to love.... Circumstances, environments, opportunities contributed to her defeat; but I will answer for it she has known moments of abnegation as lofty, struggles as desperate, triumphs of conscience over instinct as noble, as delicate, and as touching as those experienced by any Lucretia of the Rue Tronchet or the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. She has been beaten, that is all, worsted in the conflict; and it is for us, who are women like herself, to help her to rise. But I prose,� said Grandmamma; “I sound to myself like a dull tract or an indifferent sermon. And Lucie must be getting tired of the garden!�

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:

“Welcome once more to France, Monsieur Dunbar!�

“But, Mamma,� put in Monsieur de Courvaux, as young Mr. Brown started and crimsoned to the roots of his tawny hair, “the name of Monsieur is Brown, and he has never before visited our country.�

“Monsieur Brown will pardon me!� Madame de Courvaux rose to her full height and swept the astonished young fellow a wonderful curtsy. “The old are apt to make mistakes. And—there sounds the dressing gong!�

Indeed, the metallic tintamarre of the instrument named began at that instant, and the great room emptied as the chatterers and tea drinkers scurried away. A rosy, civil footman in plain black livery showed Mr. Brown to his room, which was not unreasonably high up, and boasted a dressing cabinet and a bath. As Brown hurriedly removed the smuts of the railway with oceans of soap and water, and got into his evening clothes—much too new and well cut for a tutor—he pondered. As he shook some attar of violets—much too expensive a perfume for a tutor, who, at the most, should content himself with Eau de Cologne of the ninepenny brand—upon his handkerchief, he shook his head.

“I’ll be shot if she didn’t, and plainly too! It wasn’t the confusion of the beastly all-night train journey from Paris. It wasn’t the clatter of French talk, or the delusion of a guilty conscience—decidedly not! The thing is as certain as it is inexplicable! I arrive under the name of Brown at a country house in a country I don’t know, belonging to people I have never met, and the second lady I am introduced to addresses me as Mr. Dunbar. There’s the second gong! I wonder whether there is a governess for me to take in, or whether I trot behind my superiors, who aren’t paid a hundred and fifty pounds a year to teach English?�

And Mr. Brown went down to dinner. Somewhat to his surprise, he was placed impartially, served without prejudice, and conversed with as an equal. The De Courvaux were charming people, their tutor thought—equal to the best-bred Britons he had ever met. His pupils—the freckled boy with hair cropped à la brosse, and the pretty, frank-mannered girl of sixteen—interested him. He was uncommonly obliged to the kind old Duke for his recommendation; the bread of servitude eaten under this hospitable roof would have no bitter herbs mingled with it, that was plain. He helped himself to an entrée of calves’ tongues stewed with mushrooms, as he thought this, and noted the violet bouquet of the old Bordeaux with which one of the ripe-faced, black-liveried footmen filled his glass. And perhaps he thought of another table, at the bottom of which his place had been always laid, and of the grim, gaunt dining-room in which it stood, with the targets and breast-pieces, the chain and plate mail of his—Brown’s—forebears winking against the deep lusterless black of the antique paneling; and, opposite, lost in deep reflection, the master of the house, moody, haggard, gray-moustached and gray-haired, but eminently handsome still, leaning his head upon his hand, and staring at the gold and ruby reflections of the wine decanters in the polished surface of the ancient oak, or staring straight before him at the portrait, so oddly out of keeping with the Lord Neils and Lord Ronalds in tartans and powdered wigs, the Lady Agnes and the Lady Jean in hoops and stomachers, with their hair dressed over cushions, and shepherds’ crooks in their narrow, yellowish hands.... That portrait, of an exquisite girl—a lily-faced, gold-haired, blue-eyed child in the ball costume of 1870—had been the object of Mr. Brown’s boyish adoration. Varolan painted it, Mr. Brown’s uncle—whose name was no more Brown than his nephew’s—had often said. And on one occasion, years previously, he had expanded sufficiently to tell his nephew and expectant heir that the original of the portrait was the daughter of a ducal family of France, a star moving in the social orbit of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, married to a Minister of the Imperial Government a few weeks previous to that Government’s collapse and fall.

“I believe the dear old boy must have been in love with her before Uncle Ronald died, and he came in for the family honors,� mused Mr. Brown, and then began to wonder whether he had treated the dear old boy badly or vice versa. For between this uncle and nephew, who, despite a certain chilly stiffness and rigor of mental bearing, often mutually exhibited by relations, were sincerely attached to each other, a breach had opened, an estrangement had occurred. Hot words and bitter reproaches had suddenly, unexpectedly been exchanged, old wrongs flaming up at a kindling word, forgotten grudges coming to light in the blaze of the conflagration....

And so it had come to pass that the son of Lord Hailhope’s younger brother, named Angus after his uncle, had not been thrown, had hurled himself upon his own resources. And the Duke of Atholblair had found him the place of English tutor in the family of Madame de Courvaux.

“It is the only thing that presents itself,� the aged peer had explained, “and therefore, my dear boy, you had better take it until something better turns up.�

For the present. But the future? Mr. Brown wondered whether he and the English grammar and lexicon—the phrase book, dictionary, and the other volumes which constituted his tutorial equipment—were doomed to grow gray and dog’s-eared, drooping and shabby together?

Then he looked up, for some one touched him upon the arm.

“The ladies permit us to smoke in the library, which is the best room for music in the house,� said the pleasant voice of Monsieur de Courvaux; “so we will take our café and chasse in their company, if you please.�

Mr. Brown reached the door in time to open it, and to comprehend that the act of gallantry was not expected of him. And the feminine paroquets and the sable-coated male rooks went by, and Mademoiselle Lucie gave the handsome, well-groomed Englishman a shy glance of approval from under her black eyelashes, and Monsieur Frédéric, puffy with incipient indigestion, grinned feebly. Brown put his hand upon the boy’s shoulder, and followed the rest.

“You don’t want me to do any English to-night, do you, Monsieur Brown?� young hopeful insinuated, as they went into the long walnut-paneled room with another bay at the southern end with blinds undrawn, revealing a wonderful panorama of moonlit forest and river and champaign. “I can say ‘all-a-raight!’ ‘wat-a-rot!’ and ‘daddle-doo!’ already,� the youth continued. “The English groom of papa, I learned the words of him, voyez! You shall know Smeet, to-morrow!�

“Thanks, old fellow!� said Mr. Brown, with a good-humored smile.

“Grandmamma is making a sign that you are to go and speak to her, Monsieur,� said Mademoiselle Lucie, Brown’s elder pupil-elect. “Everybody in this house obeys Grandmamma, and so must you. Mamma says it is because she was so beautiful when she was young—young, you comprehend, as in that portrait over the fireplace—that everybody fell down and worshiped her. And she is beautiful now, is she not, sir? Not as the portrait; but——�

“The portrait, Mademoiselle?... Over the fireplace.... Good Lord, what an extraordinary likeness!� broke from Mr. Brown. For the counterpart of the exquisite picture of Varolan that had hung in the dining hall of the gray old northern castle where Mr. Brown’s boyhood, youth, and earliest manhood had been spent, hung above the hooded fifteenth-century fireplace of the noble library of this French château.

There she stood, the golden, slender, lily-faced, sapphire-eyed young aristocrat of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, with her indefinable air of pride and hauteur and exclusiveness mingled with girlish merriment and mischief. And there she sat—the original in the flesh—Madame la Marquise de Courvaux, the Grandmamma of these young people—regal in sweeping folds of amethyst velvet and wonderful creamy Spanish point lace.

Obedient to the bidding of her fan, Mr. Brown crossed the library and took the chair she indicated near her. And the diamond cross upon her still beautiful bosom moved quickly, with the beating of Grandmamma’s heart, as he did this.

“How like he is!—how like!� she whispered to herself; and the electric lights became crystal girandoles, and the library became a ballroom at the Tuileries. The Empress, beautiful and cold, passed down the ranks of curtsying, bare-backed, bejeweled women and bowing, gold-laced men. Monsieur de Courvaux, with his orders, his bald forehead, and his white whiskers, released mademoiselle at the claim of a tall, tawny-haired, hazel-eyed, fair-faced partner, a Highland gentleman, in plaid and philabeg, with sporran and claymore, the antique gold brooch upon his shoulder set with ancient amethysts, river pearls and cairngorms. And he told her how he loved her, there in the alcove of palms, and heard her little confession that, had she not been bound by a promise of marriage to Monsieur de Courvaux she would—oh, how gladly!—become the wife of Monsieur Angus Dunbar.

“As you say.... Fate has been cruel to both of us.... And—and I am engaged. She lives in Leicestershire. I met her one hunting season. She is in Paris, staying at Meurice’s with her mother now. They’re buying the trousseau.... God help me!� groaned Angus Dunbar.

But the little lady of the Faubourg Saint-Germain drew back the hand he snatched at, and swept him a haughty little curtsy, looking straight in his face: “The State Quadrille is beginning. Be so good as to take me to Mamma.... And I wish you all happiness, sir, and your fiancée also.� Another little curtsy he got, poor lad, with her “Adieu, and a thousand thanks, Monsieur!� and then—he walked the dusty streets of Paris until morning; while Mademoiselle lay sleepless on her tear-drenched lace pillows. And——

Grandmamma awakened as though from a dream, to meet the frank hazel eyes of Mr. Brown, the English tutor.

“Monsieur will forgive the curiosity of an old woman,� she said, with her inimitable air of grace and sweetness. “I wished to ask whether you were not of Northern race—a Scot, for example? Yes? Ah, I thought I had guessed correctly. The type is not to be mistaken, and I once had—a dear friend!—whom Monsieur resembles to identity. But his name was not Brown.�

“I was within an ace of telling her mine was not, either,� reflected the English tutor as, an hour or so later, he got into bed. “How perfectly beautiful Madame—not the agaçante, espiègle little Madame, but the old one—must have been in the rich prime of her womanhood! Did she and my uncle ever meet again, I wonder? No, I should think not. The dear old boy is just the sort of character to hug a romance all his life, and she—she is just the woman to be the heroine of one. Are all French country-house beds in this style, and is one supposed to draw these rosebudded chintz curtains modestly round one, or let them alone?� Mr. Brown concluded to let them alone, and fell very soundly asleep.

At the late breakfast, an elaborate meal, beginning with soup and fish, and ending with tea and cakes, it was explained to the tutor that no English lesson was to be given that day, as a costume ball of the calico type was to take place that evening, and the children’s study, a homely, comfortable little wainscoted parlor on the ground floor, looking out upon a grass-grown courtyard with a bronze fountain in the middle, was to be given up to hats, coats, and opera cloaks. Monsieur Frédéric was to personate one of his own ancestors, page to the Duke of Burgundy, killed in a jousting match in 1369, Monsieur le Marquis and Madame respectively appearing as the Chevalier de Courvaux and his lady, parents of the youth referred to, represented in a miniature by Othea. Mademoiselle Lucie chose to be “Undine� in gauze and water-lilies. For Monsieur Brown a character could surely be found, a costume devised, even at the eleventh hour. There were jack-boots, salades, and coats of mail innumerable in the great hall, Mr. Brown, who shared the objection of his British countrymen to being made to appear ridiculous, shook his head. He preferred not to dress up; but he had, or thought he had, packed away in one of his portmanteaux (which were too numerous for a tutor) something that would do. A Highland costume, in fact, of the modified kind worn by gentlemen of Caledonia as dinner dress or upon occasions of festivity.

Thus Mr. Brown unconsciously pledged himself to bring about a crisis in the lives of two people, one of whom was actively engaged at that moment in trying to find him. For Lord Hailhope was genuinely attached to his nephew, and the basis of the quarrel between them, never very secure, had been shaken and shattered, firstly, by the indifference manifested by the young lady concerned, a rather plain young heiress, at the news of the said nephew’s disappearance, and, secondly, by her marriage with her father’s chaplain, a Presbyterian divine of thunderous eloquence and sweeping predestinary convictions.

“Tell him that I was in the wrong—that I apologize—that everything shall be as it was before, if he will come back! The money shall be secured to him; I will guarantee that,� Lord Hailhope wrote to the London solicitor employed in the search for Young Lochinvar, who had sprung to the saddle and ridden away—without the lady. “If he will not come to me, I will go to him. The insult was gross; I admit it, and will atone to the best of my ability!�

“The hot-headed old Highlander!� commented the man of law, as he filed the letter. “He adopts the boy—his dead brother’s son—brings him up in the expectation of inheriting his private fortune as well as the title, and then turns him out of doors because he won’t marry a girl with teeth like tombstones and a fancy for another man. If Master Angus Dunbar is wise, he will hold out against going back until that question of the money has been disposed of irrevocably. Though people never have sense—lucky for my profession!�

Meanwhile, at Charny les Bois preparations for the ball—the materials of which owed much more to the lordly silkworm than the plebeian cotton pod—went on apace. Evening came, the band of the cuirassiers, generously lent by Monsieur the Colonel, drove over from the barracks in a couple of chars-à -bancs, the Colonel and the officers of that gallant regiment, arrayed to kill in the green and gold costumes of the hunt of the Grand Monarque, followed upon their English drague. Voitures of every description disgorged their happy loads. Monsieur, Madame, the young ladies and the young gentlemen, hot, happy, smiling, and fearfully and wonderfully disguised.

“Their unconsciousness, the entire absence of the conviction that they are ridiculous, makes them quite lovable,� thought Mr. Brown. “That fat, fair papa, with spectacles and large sandy whiskers, as Pluton, from Orphée aux Enfers, in red satin tunic and black silk tights spotted with yellow, a satin cloak with a train, a gilt pasteboard crown and trident pleases me tremendously. He is, I believe, a magistrate from Charny. His wife is the even fatter and fairer lady attired as Norma, and those three little dumpy girls, flower girls of a period decidedly uncertain.�

“Does not Monsieur dance?� said Mademoiselle Lucie, looking, with her filmy green draperies, her fair locks crowned, and her slim waist girdled with water-lilies and forget-me-nots, a really exquisite river sprite.

“If Mademoiselle would accord me the honor of her hand in a valse,� Mr. Brown began; then he broke off, remembering that in England the tutor did not usually dance with the daughters of the house—if, indeed, that functionary danced at all. But——

“Mamma has been telling me that Englishmen dance badly,� observed Mademoiselle, with a twinkle in her blue eyes. “Grandmamma will have it, by the way, that you are Scotch! Do not look round for her; she was a little fatigued by so much conversation and fuss, and will not come down to-night.... Heavens! look at Frédéric,� she added, in a tone of sisterly solicitude, as the page of the Court of Burgundy moved unsteadily into sight, clinging to the arm of a bosom friend in a “celadon� costume and a condition of similar obfuscation. “Alas! I comprehend!� she continued. “Those plums conserved in cognac have a fatal fascination for my unhappy brother. Quick, Monsieur! make to remove him from the view of Papa, or the consequences will be of the most terrible.... Frédéric has been already warned....�

And outwardly grave and sympathetic, albeit splitting with repressed laughter, Mr. Brown went in chase of the unseasoned vessels, and conveyed them to the safe harbor of the small study on the second floor, which had been allotted to him as a den. Locking them in, he was about to descend in search of seltzer water, when, in the act of crossing the gallery, unlighted save for the dazzling moonlight that poured through the long mullioned windows, giving a strange semblance of fantastic life to the dark family portraits on the opposite wall, and lying in silver pools upon the shining parquet islanded with threadbare carpets of ancient Oriental woof, he encountered the elder Madame de Courvaux, who came swiftly toward him from the opposite end of a long gallery, carrying a light and a book that looked like a Catholic breviary. With the glamour of moonlight upon her, in a loose silken dressing robe trimmed with the priceless lace she affected, her wealth of golden-gray tresses in two massive plaits, drawn forward and hanging over her bosom, almost to her knees, her beauty was marvelous. Mr. Brown caught his breath and stopped short; Madame, on her part, uttered a faint cry—was it of delight or of terror?—and would have dropped her candle had not the tutor caught it and placed it on a console that stood near.

“Pardon, Madame!� he was beginning, when....

“Oh, Angus Dunbar! Angus, my beloved, my adored!� broke from Madame de Courvaux. “There is no need that either of us should ask for pardon.� Her blue eyes gleamed like sapphires, her still beautiful bosom heaved and panted, her lips smiled, though the great tears brimmed one by one over her underlids and chased down her pale cheeks. “We did what was right. The path of honor was never easy. You married, and I also, and all these years no news of you has reached me. But I understand now that you are dead, and bound no longer by the vows of earth, and that you have come, brave as of old, beautiful as of old, to tell me that you are free!�

With an impulse never quite to be accounted for, Angus Dunbar, the younger, stepped forward and enclosed in his own warm, living grasp Madame’s trembling hands....

“My name is Angus Dunbar, Madame,� he said, “but—but I believe you must be speaking of my uncle. He succeeded to the peerage twenty years ago; he is now Lord Hailhope, but he—he never married, though I believe he loved, very sincerely and devotedly, a lady whose portrait by Varolan hangs in the dining-room at Hailhope, just as it hangs in the library here at Charny les Bois.�

“I—I do not understand.... How comes it that——� Madame hesitated piteously, her hands wringing each other, her great wistful eyes fixed upon the splendid, stalwart figure of the young man. “You are so like.... And the costume——�

“It is customary for Highland gentlemen to wear the kilt at social functions; and when I left Hailhope—or, rather, was turned out of doors, for my uncle disowned me when I refused to marry a girl who did not care for me, and who has since married to please herself—Gregor packed it in one of my kit cases. The cat is out of the bag as well as the kilt.... I came here as English tutor to your grandchildren, Madame, at the suggestion of an old friend, the Duke of Atholblair, to whom I told the story of the quarrel with my uncle.�

Madame began to recover her courtly grace and self-possession. Her hands ceased to tremble in Dunbar’s clasp; she drew them away with a smile that was only a little fluttered.

“And I took you for a ghost ... a revenant.... I was a little agitated.... I had been suffering from an attack of the nerves.... Monsieur will make allowances for a superstitious old woman. To-morrow, after breakfast, in the garden Monsieur will explain the whole story to me—how it came that Monsieur Dunbar, his uncle, now Lord Hailhope—ah, yes! there was a crippled elder brother of that title—disowned his nephew for refusing to give his hand to one he did not love.... I should have imagined—— Good-night, Monsieur!�

In the garden, after breakfast, Angus Dunbar, no longer handicapped by the plebeian name of Brown, told his story to a sympathetic listener. Madame’s head was bent—perhaps her hearing was not so good as it had been when, more than forty years previously, Angus Dunbar, the elder, had whispered his secret in that delicate ear. But as footsteps sounded upon the terrace, and one of the fresh-faced, black-liveried footmen appeared, piloting a stranger, a tall, somewhat stern-featured, gray-moustached gentleman, she started and looked round. In the same moment the late Mr. Brown jumped up, over-setting his chair, the pugs barked, and——

“I owed it to you to make the first move,� said Lord Hailhope, rather huskily, as the uncle and nephew grasped hands. “Forgive me, Angus, my dear boy!�

“Lady Grisel has married the Presbyterian minister, sir, and we’re all going to be happy for ever after, like people in a fairy tale,� said Angus Dunbar. Then he turned to Madame de Courvaux, and bowed with his best grace. “Madame, permit me to present my uncle, Lord Hailhope, who I believe has had the honor of meeting you before!�

And, being possessed of a degree of discretion quite proper and desirable in a tutor, Mr. Angus Dunbar moved away in the direction of a rose walk, down which Mademoiselle Lucie’s white gown had flitted a moment before, leaving the two old lovers looking in each other’s eyes.

AN INDIAN BABY

WHEN old Lovelace-Legge sank into a stertorous final coma which his lovely marble tombstone called by a much prettier name, and the blinds were drawn up after a decent interval, and a tremendous heraldic joke, furnished by Heralds’ College, was dismounted from over the front door, Mrs. Lovelace-Legge, after the requisite period of seclusion, took an exquisite little gem of a house in Sloane Street, furnished it to a marvel, and began, with discreetness, to enjoy herself. All her affairs flourished, her pet plans prospered, her gratifications were many, her disappointments nil; people began to call her “Lucky Lotta Legge.� She took her good fortune as her due.

“Perhaps she feels she deserves something of Providence for putting up patiently with old Lovelace-Legge during those ten awful years,� said Lady Cranberry, her dearest friend, to another just a shade less dear, as they walked up Sloane Street one fine morning.

“I suppose he was awful?� hazarded the second-best beloved.

Lady Cranberry crumpled her eyebrows. “He had a complexion like New Zealand meat,� she said. “Next time you walk up the King’s Road with Lotta, watch her as you pass a cheap butcher’s shop. She will wince and look the other way, and you may guess what she is thinking of, poor darling!�

“She said to me once,� remarked the second-best one, “‘I always fretted for children, but perhaps they were wisely withheld.’�

“I should think so,� consented Lady Cranberry. “When there is a chance of an infant’s coming into the world with three chins and a nose like Punch, to say nothing of bandy legs and patent shoes like bicycle gear cases——�

The second-best reminded Lady Cranberry that children were not usually born with shoes.

“Of course, I meant feet,� said Lady Cranberry. “Feet of that size and flatness, too. And if there is the merest chance of a child’s coming into the world thus handicapped, it is infinitely better that the child should keep out of it. Here we are at Lotta’s door. Isn’t that cream enamel with the old Florentine copper-embossed knocker and bells too divine for anything? Great Heavens!�

She had evidently received a shock, for she was paler than her powder, and as she clutched her companion’s arm her eyes were fixed in quite a ghastly stare.

“Mercy!� the next best-beloved friend of the owner of the cream-white door with the Florentine copper work adjuncts exclaimed, “you saw something—what?�

But Lady Cranberry, with more energy than her weak state seemed to warrant, had ascended Mrs. Lovelace-Legge’s brown doorsteps, and was plying the Florentine knocker. The servant who responded to the summons thought that Mrs. Lovelace-Legge was at home, but knew her to be profoundly engaged.

“Take up the names. We will wait,� said Lady Cranberry. Then, as the respectful servant went upstairs, she drew her companion into the shelter of a little reposeful niche, in Liberty draperies and Indian carved wood, where palms and things flourished in pots, and an object of familiar shape, in bamboo work, and newly freed from swathings of brown paper, stood upon a table. To this she pointed with a neatly gloved forefinger that trembled with emotion.

“Oh! Why,� cried the other, “it is A BABY’S CRADLE!�

“It was delivered,� said Lady Cranberry, “at this door as we came up. It cannot be for a doll: it is full-sized. What on earth can Lotta want with such a thing?�

As she uttered these words the servant returned. His mistress begged the ladies to come upstairs. He delivered his message, and then, with well-trained gravity, lifted the compromising cradle and led the way upstairs. Mrs. Lovelace-Legge did not purpose to receive her friends in the drawing-room, it appeared, or even on the floor above, where her bedroom and boudoir were situated. The ladies were conducted by their guide to regions more airy still; indeed, their progress knew no pause until they reached the highest landing. Here Lady Cranberry received another shock, for a gaily-painted wooden gate, newly hung, gave access to a space where a rocking-horse stood rampant in all the glory of bright paint and red leather trappings; and beyond, through an open door, shone a glimpse of an infantile Paradise, all rosebud dimity, blue ribbons, and brightness, in the midst of which moved Mrs. Lovelace-Legge radiant in a lawn apron with Valenciennes insertion, issuing directions to a head nurse of matronly proportions, an under-nurse of less discretionary years, and a young person dressed in blue baize, trimmed with red braid and buttons, whose functions were less determinable.

“My dears!� Mrs. Lovelace-Legge fluttered to her friends and kissed them, and nothing save Lady Cranberry’s imperative need of an explanation kept that lady from swooning on the spot. “You find me all anyhow,� said Lotta, with beaming eyes. “But come—come and look.� She pioneered the way into the room beyond, with its Lilliputian fittings, its suggestive cosiness, its scent of violet powder and new flannel. “Do you think he will be happy here?� she asked, with a tender quasi-maternal quaver of delightful anticipation.

“Who is—He?�

Lady Cranberry hardly recognized her own voice, so transformed was it by the emotions she suppressed; but Mrs. Lovelace-Legge noticed nothing. “Who?� she echoed, and then laughed with moist, beaming eyes. “Who but the baby? Is it possible I haven’t told you? Or Lucy?� The second-best-beloved shook her head. “No. You see—the news of his coming was broken so suddenly that I was carried off my feet, and since then I’ve done nothing but engage nurses and buy baby things. This is Mrs. Porter�—she turned to the matronly person—“who will have entire charge of my pet—when he arrives; and this is Susan, her assistant. This�—she indicated the anomaly in blue baize and red braid—“is Miss Pilsener, from the Brompton Kindergarten. She is going to teach me how to open his little—little mind, and be everything to him from the very beginning!�

“Won’t you open our little minds?� implored the second-best friend. “You know we are in a state of the darkest ignorance.�

Mrs. Lovelace-Legge dismissed her attendants, and made her friends sit down on the nursery sofa, and sank into a low nursing-chair. She absently tried on an india-rubber apron as she spoke, and it was plain her heart was with the invisible infant. “Ask me questions,� she said. “I don’t seem able to keep my thoughts concentrated on anything but—baby!�

“You must understand, Lotta,� said Lady Cranberry, “that to find you in possession of�—she gulped—“a baby is a shock in itself to your most intimate friends. And in the name of your regard for Lucy, supposing myself to have no claim upon your confidence, I must ask you to explain how you come to be in possession of such a—such a thing? And to—to whom it belongs—and where it is coming from?�

“I came into possession of baby through a dear friend,� explained Mrs. Lovelace-Legge. She added: “Perhaps you have heard of General Carabyne—Lieutenant-General Ranford Carabyne of the Ordnance Department, Calcutta?�

Her friends replied simultaneously: “Never!�

“He is the father of my child,� continued Mrs. Lovelace-Legge, “and, I am given to understand, a charming person!�

Lady Cranberry’s lips moved soundlessly. She might have been breathing a prayer for patience.

“The General,� went on Lotta, “married my old school-fellow, Julia Daubeny, in the spring of last year. He had already been married—in fact, had been twice a widower—when Julia met him at a Garrison Gymkhana. It was a case of love at first sight, and I gave Julia her trousseau as my wedding present. And now she is sending me home the General’s baby—the child of his last wife—as it cannot stand the climate, and she knows how I dote on little children.�

“How old is this child?� queried Lady Cranberry.

Mrs. Lovelace-Legge produced a thin crackling envelope from her pocket, and unfolded Mrs. Carabyne’s letter. “Julia always writes without punctuation, and all her capitals are in the wrong places,� she said, apologizing for the hesitation with which she attacked the scrawled pages. “‘I forgot to mention,’� wrote Julia, “‘that the General has one son quite a darling and a favorite with everybody. He was christened Dampierre. There is French blood on the mother’s side, but everybody calls him ‘Dumps.’ He has the sweetest nature and splendid teeth until about six months old——’�

“Incoherent, isn’t she, rather?� hinted Lady Cranberry.

“‘Six months old when he was thrown out of his bamboo-cart’—Anglo-Indian for perambulator, I suppose—‘thrown out of his bamboo-cart with a woman who had got hold of him at the time a most dreadful creature and sustained a severe concussion of the brain. You will gather by this that the poor dear is inclined to be more than a little child.’�

“Is not the sense of that rather—involved?�

Mrs. Lovelace-Legge held out the letter.

“It is ‘child’ or else ‘wild,’� Lady Cranberry said, dropping her eyeglasses.

“As if an infant of six months old could be called ‘wild’!� giggled Mrs. Lovelace-Legge. She read on:

“‘Now the doctors have positively ordered him home, and we have not the least idea where to send him. In this dilemma I thought of you. The General shakes his head, but I have carried my point, and Dumps and his nurse sail by the “Ramjowrah� next Thursday, and when arrived in London will come straight to you. I have every faith in your goodness of heart, and know that poor dear Dumps could be placed in charge of no kinder friend. He is extremely affectionate—from pursuits which ruin many of the most promising young.’�

“Humph!� ejaculated the puzzled Lady Cranberry.

“Perhaps Julia means tearing his clothes and sucking the paint off his toys?� suggested the second-best dearest friend.

Mrs. Lovelace-Legge read on: “‘Men in India if you have read Rudyard Kipling I need not be more definite we shall look to your gentle influence to wean him.’�

“One thing at least is clear,� remarked Lady Cranberry. “The child is not yet weaned. As to your correspondent’s style, Lotta——� She said no more, but in her mind she harbored a most definite conviction that Julia Carabyne drank. “Eau de Cologne or red lavender,� she thought, “or pure, unadulterated cognac. I pity the General from my heart!�

A few more confused and comma-less paragraphs, and the letter wound up.

“You think I did right?� Mrs. Lovelace-Legge glanced round at her preparations. “But, indeed, I had no choice. How could any woman with a heart—and a nursery——�

“Both unoccupied?� said Lady Cranberry.

“Close her doors against a little sick baby, coming all the way from India in a nurse’s arms? The bare idea strikes one as horrible! Besides, the poor darling may arrive at any moment!� Mrs. Lovelace-Legge dried her pretty eyes with a fragment of gossamer cambric, and then—rat-tatter, tatter, TAT! went the hall-door knocker.

The three ladies started to their feet. Mrs. Lovelace-Legge rushed to the window.

“Can it be?�

“The baby—arrived?�...

“It has! I see the top of a cab piled with luggage!� cried Mrs. Lovelace-Legge, leaning eagerly from the nursery window. “I can make out the Harries Line label on the portmanteaux——�

The second-best friend joined her at the casement.

“One thing puzzles me,� she said, peering downward. “Would a child of that age travel with gun-cases and a bicycle?�

“They may belong to a passenger friend who promised to see the dear child delivered safely into my hands. Ah, here is Simmons!�

Simmons it was, with a salver and a card. He wore a peculiar, rather wild expression, and his countenance was flushed and somewhat swollen; perhaps with the effort of climbing so many stairs. All three ladies hurried to meet him.

“He—it—the——�

“They have arrived?� gasped little Mrs. Lovelace-Legge.

Simmons bowed his head. His mistress could not speak. She took the card without looking at it, and turned away.

“Show them up here!� commanded Lady Cranberry, sympathetically comprehending Lotta’s emotion.

“And pay the cabman,� added the second-best friend.

Left together, the three women broke out into anticipatory ejaculations:

“The pet!�

“The wumpsy!�

“Will it be pretty?�

“Oh, I hope so! But even if it is not,� cried little Mrs. Lovelace-Legge, clasping her hands, “I feel that I shall love it. Ought we�—her eyebrows crumpled inquiringly—“ought we to give it a warm bath at once? Where is Nurse?�

Nurse and her understrapper appeared on the scene with the young lady from the Kindergarten. Six eager feminine heads were projected over the balusters of the top landing as masculine footsteps creaked upon the staircase, and a tall young man, dressed in a rough yachting suit of blue serge, raised his eyes—a handsome and ingenuous pair—and blushed under the salvo of optical artillery which greeted his appearance. Behind him followed a grizzled, middle-aged person, evidently a soldier-servant in mufti.

“I—I presume ...,� the young gentleman began, “I—I have the honor....�

“I am Mrs. Lovelace-Legge,� cried the charming widow, craning forward, “and where—oh, where is the baby?�

The young man turned pale. “The—the baby?�

“Haven’t you brought it?� cried all the ladies.

Tears welled up in Mrs. Lovelace-Legge’s lovely eyes.

“Don’t tell me it is dead!� she gasped. “Oh, if that were true, how could I break the news to Julia and General Carabyne?�

“Madam,� stammered the young gentleman, “I am the only son of General Carabyne—Dampierre Carabyne.� He blushed again. “People usually call me ‘Dumps,’� he said, and broke off as all six women screamed at once:

“You! You the baby!�

And the nurses flung their clean cambric aprons over their heads, and rushed in titters from the scene, as poor little Mrs. Lovelace-Legge went into screaming hysterics in the arms of her second-dearest friend.

“It is all a ridi—a ridiculous misunderstanding!� gasped Lady Cranberry, an hour later, as the recovered hostess, her friends, and her newly-arrived guest sat together in the drawing-room. “Let him see Mrs. Carabyne’s letter, Lotta. Perhaps he will be able to—— No! Better give it to me.� She mounted her gold eyeglasses upon her aquiline nose, and conned the Runic scroll a while. “We were misled,� she explained to the young man, “principally by a reference to your nurse.�

“Molloy is my nurse,� explained Mr. Dampierre Carabyne. “He was one of the hospital orderlies at Calcutta, and looked after me when I was ill. And the Pater thought it best that he should valet me on the voyage, being a useful, experienced kind of man.�

“As to this illness you speak of?� said Lady Cranberry.

“It happened six months ago....�

“Ago! I see a glimmer,� said Lady Cranberry.

“When I was thrown out of a bamboo-cart in which I was driving a friend of mine—a very great friend.�

Again the young man colored.

“The woman who had got hold of him,� murmured Lady Cranberry to herself. “And ‘more than a little child’ means ‘more than a little wild.’ I should have seen that in his eye without a hint from Mrs. Carabyne.�

Thus, bit by bit, the determined lady translated Julia’s letter, which ran as follows:

“He was christened Dampierre (there is French blood on the mother’s side); but everybody calls him ‘Dumps.’ He has the sweetest nature, and splendid health until six months ago, when he was thrown out of his bamboo-cart with a woman who had got hold of him at the time—a most dreadful creature—and sustained a severe concussion of the brain. (You will gather by this that the poor dear is inclined to be more than a little wild.) Now the doctors have positively ordered him home, and we have not the least idea where to send him. In this dilemma I thought of you. The General shakes his head, but I have carried my point, and Dumps and his nurse sail by the Ramjowrah next Thursday, and when arrived in London will come straight to you. I have every faith in your goodness of heart, and know that poor dear Dumps could be placed in charge of no kinder friend.... He is extremely affectionate.... From pursuits which ruin many of the most promising young men in India (if you have read Rudyard Kipling I need not be more definite) we look to your gentle influence to wean him.�

Lady Cranberry took off her pince-nez and refolded the letter. As she did so she glanced toward the snug nook by the fireplace, where the pretty widow, entrenched behind the barricade of her afternoon tea-table, was making but a feeble show of resistance to the raking fire of Dumps’s handsome eyes. In such a mood such a woman as Lady Cranberry shares a corner of the mantle of the Prophets. It occurred to her that the infantile Paradise upstairs might not, if all went merrily as marriage bells, remain so very long untenanted.

And, indeed, at the expiration of a twelvemonth from that date Mrs. Dampierre Carabyne——

Please see the left-hand top corner reserved in the morning papers for these delicate and personal intimations.

YVONNE

In Two Parts

I

A MILE or so north of the fishy little Breton harbor town of Paimpol, the hamlet of Pors Lanec is represented by a scattered cluster of low-pitched, straggling cottages built of gray granite boulders splashed with yellow lichen, their thatch of furze and reeds or broom-bush secured by lashings of rope, and heavy flagstones from the fierce assaults of the western gales. One in especial stands on an incline trending toward the beach, below the level of the Paimpol road. Its rear wall is formed by a low cliff against which it has been built, and which, rearing some twenty feet above the level of its shaggy brown roof, and throwing out a natural buttress toward the sea, protects the poor dwelling from the icy northern winds. Three uneven steps, worn by the feet of generations of fisher-dwellers, lead to the door, whose inner latch is lifted by a length of rope-yarn, reeved through a hole. On each side of the door a window has been hollowed out in the solid masonry of the wall, and roughly glazed; and beneath the rude slate ledge of each is a weather-beaten bench of drift-oak, blackened by age and usage. The door standing open gives a glimpse of the usual Breton interior, bunches of dried herbs, nets, and baskets depending from the blackened rafters, carved sleeping-bunks set about the walls, a few quaint pewter and copper flagons hanging on pegs driven into the chimney, and reflecting the leaping blaze of the pine and beechwood branches burning on the hearth.

I do not know who lives in Mademoiselle Yvonne’s cottage now, but a year ago the western gale was churning the gray sea into futile anger, and thrashing the stunted bushes into a more bending shape. The sky was somber as the sea, with eastward-hurrying drifts of slaty cirrus, which separated to reveal pale, sun-washed sky-spaces, and closed again, making the gloom seem deeper than before.

It was the eighth of December, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception—the day of the Pardon des Islandais—and the morning Angelus was ringing from the storm-beaten little chapel on the heights above, where nosegays of artificial flowers and strings of shells adorned the image of Our Lady of Good Help, and white-capped women, and rugged-faced, long-haired men knelt, rapt and serious, on the sandy stone pavement. Others were hurrying into Paimpol, where the streets were decorated with white sheets bordered with holly and ivy leaves in readiness for the procession. And a fine, icy rain was driving before the wind, and Yvonne’s tables and chairs stood out of doors while their owner beat and scrubbed them vigorously with a birch-broom dipped in soap-suds.

“She works upon the fête day, yes; but for all that she is no heretic, the poor Yvonne,� a passer-by explained to a companion—a stranger who showed surprise at the unusual spectacle. “All days are alike to her—and Our Lady understands.�

The speaker, a brown-faced, vigorous woman of fifty, paused on the pathway, littered with brown trails of slippery seaweed, and cried:

“Hey! So you’re not going with us to Paimpol, Mademoiselle Yvonne?�

Mademoiselle Yvonne ceased flogging her table, and turned her face toward the questioner. It was a full, straight-featured, rather massive face, framed in the shell-fluted cap worn by unmarried women. The brows were broad, and from under the straight eyebrows looked a pair of eyes that were blue and clear and candid as those of the little boy who clung to the skirts of the woman who addressed her. As she drew herself up, resting on her birch-broom, it might be seen that she was tall and deep-chested and broad-bosomed, and that the massive plaits of hair coiled upon her temples were gray.

“Going to Paimpol! Sure, it is impossible,� said Mademoiselle Yvonne. “There is so much to do getting the house ready.� A rich deep color flushed her cheeks, staining her temples and tinting her full throat to the edge of her bodice. “When one is to be married, Madame understands——�

“So then! You have heard?� cried the neighbor with an elaborate pantomime of delight at the good news. “You have had a letter from Iceland at last?�

The clear blue eyes looked troubled for a moment.

“No. Not that,� said Mademoiselle Yvonne. “Not precisely a letter, but I have made out why the Marie au Secours delays so long. You see, they must have had a great catch at the cod-fisheries, and, being a man of brains, my Yann set out to make the most of his good luck. So the Marie au Secours will have merely touched at Paimpol, and then sailed down to the Gulf of Gascony, where fish fetch high prices, or even to the Sandy Isles.� One of her massive plaits, released by her vigorous movements from the confining pin, uncoiled and fell below her waist. “That is how it will have been, Madame Pilot!� exclaimed Yvonne, smiling and coiling up the beautiful hair.

“Without doubt, that is how it will have been!� assented the other.

She drove her stout elbow into the ribs of the woman who had whispered to her. “Not so loud! We people of the coast have sharper ears than you folks from inland.�

“When did he sail?�

“Twenty years ago, when she was eighteen, and all that gray hair gold.�

“Pfui! There was a blast!�

“We shall have to pick the wind’s bones all the way to Paimpol. So good-day, Mademoiselle.... Gaos, run and bid Mademoiselle Yvonne good-day.�

Madame Pilot nudged the other woman again, as much as to say: “Watch her with the child!�

Gaos obediently quitted his mother’s skirts, and Yvonne knelt down to kiss him. She whispered in the child’s ear coaxingly, and, as he hesitated, watched the innocent lips as though her fate in some inexplicable way hung upon their utterance.

“She always tries to get him to say it, and he never will!� said Madame Pilot under her breath.

“What?� mouthed the inland woman, with round, interested eyes.

The child spoke at that moment loudly and clearly.

“He will come back to-day!�

“Lord above! if he hasn’t said it!� cried Madame Pilot, and crossed herself under her ample cloak as the boy came running to her.

She caught his hand, and clattered on in her heavy wooden shoes, fighting her way resolutely against the wind, followed more slowly by the gaping inlander.

“You rogue! You little villain!� she cried to the child she dragged. “What made you say it?�

“Be-be-cause—bub—bub—boo—because it’s true!� roared Gaos, through angry sobs.

His mother, with a hasty invocation of her patron saint, dropped his hand, stopped where the beach-pathway merged in the Paimpol road, and looked back. Mademoiselle Yvonne was nowhere to be seen at first, but presently her figure mounted into view climbing the pathway to the chapel.

“She has gone to burn a candle for her good news,� said Madame Pilot. “Now which have I for a son ... a liar or a prophet? If one were to mistake and smack the prophet, it’s enough to bring a judgment down....� She shook her head mournfully. “But it is to be prayed for, all the same, that that great rogue Yann may never come wheedling back. Drowned, did you suppose? Dead? Not a bit of it!... He’s living on the fat of the land in Ploubazou, where he landed his last cargo of fish nineteen years ago, married a tavern-keeper’s daughter, and set up a sailor’s drinking-house himself; ‘The Chinese Cider Cellars,’ they call it. May Heaven punish such vagabonds!� panted Madame Pilot. “As for us in Pors Lanec, we’re peace-lovers and law-abiders, but there are stones and cudgels waiting for Monsieur Yann Tregnier whenever he shows his nose here.�

Madame Pilot stopped, as a broad-shouldered young man in a sailor’s cap and pilot-cloth jacket came tramping toward her along the puddly Paimpol road, whistling a cheerful tune. He wore thick town-made brogues instead of wooden sabots, and saluted the women in the country fashion, though to him personally they were unknown, and passed by, leaving the mother of the possible prophet staring; for he was known to her as the son of the Ploubazou tavern-keeper Yann Tregnier, christened Jean-Marie after his mother’s father. He was a well-looking, sturdy young fellow of eighteen, who had always hankered to join the Icelanders, as the cod-trawlers are called, and sail with the yearly fleet on the last day of February for the big, dangerous fisheries in the icy regions where the summers have no night. But Yann, his father, would not hear of it, and Jean-Marie had been apprenticed to a cooper in Paimpol. He had grumbled, but his fate appeared less hard now that he was in love with Gaud. Gaud lived with an aunt in the village of Pors Lanec, a place Jean-Marie knew as yet only by hearsay, since her parents lived in Paimpol, and she had met her lover while upon a visit to them. Pors Lanec lay by the beach a mile or two from Paimpol, Gaud had told him. The cottage was built against a great rock, the doorstep was the beach, and the sea the duck-pond before the door; he could not fail to recognize the place, Gaud had described it so clearly.

Gaud was a little delicate creature, with hair of burning gold hidden under her shell cap, and great violet-gray eyes, full of possible adoration for any likely young fellow who should come wooing to Pors Lanec, and the likely young fellow had come along in the person of Jean-Marie. And he had won her promise, and meant to marry her and settle down to the cooper’s trade in earnest. True, the girl was without a dower, and his father, with whom he had had a talk at Ploubazou last Sunday, had pulled a long lip at that piece of information, and he had said to the old man straight out: “Either I get Gaud or go to sea!�

“Either I get Gaud—or go to sea!� Jean-Marie repeated now in the most deep and manly voice he had at command. For the cottage built against the cliff had come in sight, a dwelling so weather-worn and lichen-stained that it might have been an excrescence upon the side of the rock that sheltered it. “Either I get Gaud....� Jean-Marie squared his shoulders, and marched down upon the cottage where Gaud lived. As his firm footsteps crossed the plateau of sandy rock that lay before the cottage door he heard a cry from within, and before he could lift a hand to the rope-yarn of the latch, the door was pulled violently back, thrown open, and a woman fell upon his breast with a sobbing shriek of joy.

“Yann! Oh, my beloved, at last!�

“Madame!� he stuttered.

“Our Lady sent me word you would return to-day, and even as I was upon my way to thank her for such grace, I turned back thinking. ‘If he should come and miss me!’�

The wind blew shrilly; the sky grew black with storm. Jean-Marie’s cheek was wet with rain or the woman’s tears. He was conscious of a dizziness. It was as though a web of some strange tissue were weaving in the chambers of his brain, and the pattern grew more and more familiar. The arms that clasped him were not those of a stranger; the heart that throbbed upon his own had rested there before. Even the cottage interior shown through the low doorway was familiar, and the oaken benches to right and left, had he not carved his name on one of them, his and another’s?

But even as these strange questions awakened in the mind of the young man, he was thrust violently back, and Yvonne was gazing, with still streaming eyes, at the face of a stranger, while, partly hidden by the tall figure of her aunt, appeared the little shrinking figure of Mademoiselle Gaud!

“Who is it?� asked Yvonne dully, without removing her eyes from that unknown face of the man whose step was like Yann’s.

“I—I believe—I think—’tis Monsieur Jean-Marie,� panted Gaud. “Sweet St. Agnes!� she prayed inwardly to her patron saint, “make her not ask me his other name! If she does I am sure I shall lie and say I do not know; so, sweetest St. Agnes, preserve me from sinning!� Next moment she breathed freely, for Yvonne stepped aside, leaving the threshold free to the stranger.

“Ask of his business, little one!� she said, without looking at Gaud, “and let him know that he was mistaken for one who has a right to be welcomed with open arms.�

She had a black woollen cloak loosely thrown about her shoulders. She sat down upon the seat to the right of the door, her elbow on her knee, her chin upon her hand, the dark folds half concealing the noble outlines of her form, her eyes fixed upon the most distant turn in the Paimpol road.

Jean-Marie was at liberty to proceed with his courting; Yvonne seemed to hear and see him no longer. Only as the lover grew gayer, and the clear laugh of Gaud sounded in unison with his, a quiver passed over the face of Yvonne. At twelve o’clock, when the dinner was ready, Gaud came dutifully to tell her. She only shook her head, and the midday meal of salt fish, potatoes, and cider was shared by the lovers.

When the dishes were washed, Jean-Marie proposed a stroll to the chapel on the cliff. Gaud, her pale cheeks tipped with a little crimson, like the leaves of a daisy, came to ask Yvonne’s permission.

“My mother allowed him to visit us in Paimpol,� she said meekly, flushing deeper as she remembered that she had introduced him as Monsieur Jean-Marie, the cooper’s apprentice, and that her mother knew nothing of his relationship to the man who had used her Aunt Yvonne so wickedly. Through the crystal of Gaud’s nature ran a little streak of deceptiveness. Like all weak things, she could be cunning where her love or her interest was concerned, and what did it matter what Jean-Marie’s father had done? she argued. He was not Jean-Marie. So she and her sweetheart set out upon their walk, keeping a decorous distance of at least six feet between them, and swinging unoccupied hands that, when the path grew narrow, would meet and cling. And Yvonne saw two figures appear in the distance upon the Paimpol road, neither of which caused her any emotion. Monsieur Blandon, the Paimpol doctor, was hirpling out upon his old white mare, to visit some of his Pors Lanec patients; half an hour must elapse before he could dismount at Yvonne’s door, the mare was so old and the road so stony. She looked away, far out to sea, and watched a tossing white sail upon the inky horizon, and with the instinct of one bred by the sea knew that there would be weather yet more stormy, for the seagulls and kittiwakes were hurrying inland. Then a heavy pair of wooden shoes clacked over the stones, and a vinous voice gave her “good-day.� It was one Piggou Moan, once a smart young fisherman and avowed rival of Yann, now the smuggler, the loafer, the drunkard of the hamlet.

“A drop o’ cider, Mademoiselle Yvonne, for old friendship’s sake and charity,� begged the toper. Yvonne scarcely looked at him, but made a slight motion of her hand toward the cottage door. With a slobbered blessing, red-nosed, ragged Piggou lurched in, lucky in the absence of Gaud, who would have found enough courage, at need, to have driven him forth with a broomstick. He reached a copper flagon from its peg, and went as if by instinct to the cider-cask that stood by the great, carved clothes-press. Minutes passed, and Piggou came out, brighter of eye if redder of nose than when he entered, wiping his dripping beard on his ragged sleeve.