Blackness surrounded the post-carriage in which I woke, and it seemed to stand in a tunnel that was afire at one end. Two huge trees, branches and all, were burning on a big hearth, stones glowing under them; and figures with long beards, in black robes, passed betwixt me and the fire, stirring a cauldron. If ever witches' brewing was seen, it looked like that. The last eclipse of mind had come upon me without any rending and tearing in the head, and facts returned clearly and directly. I saw the black robed figures were Jews cooking supper at a large fireplace, and we had driven upon the brick floor of a post-house which had a door nearly the size of a gable. At that end spread a ghostly film of open land, forest and sky. I lay stretched upon cushions as well as the vehicle would permit, and was aware by a shadow which came between me and the Jews that Skenedonk stood at the step. "What are you about?" I spoke with a rush of chagrin, sitting up. "Are we on the road to Paris?" "Yes," he answered. "You have made a mistake, Skenedonk!" "No mistake," he maintained. "Wait until I bring you some supper. After supper we can talk." "Bring the supper at once then, for I am going to talk now." "Are you quite awake?" "Quite awake. How long did it last this time?" "Two days." "We are not two days' journey out of Mittau?" "Yes." "Well, when you have horses put in to-morrow morning, turn them back to Mittau." Skenedonk went to the gigantic hearth, and one of the Jews ladled him out a bowlful of the cauldron stew, which he brought to me. The stuff was not offensive and I was hungry. He brought another bowlful for himself, and we ate as we had often done in the woods. The fire shone on his bald pate and gave out the liquid lights of his fawn eyes. "I have made a fool of myself in Mittau, Skenedonk." "Why do you want to go back?" "Because I am not going to be thrown out of the palace without a hearing." "What is the use?" said Skenedonk. "The old fat chief will not let you stay. He doesn't want to hear you talk. He wants to be king himself." "Did you see me sprawling on the floor like the idiot?" "Not like the idiot. Your face was down." "Did you see the duchess?" "Yes." "What did she do?" "Nothing. She leaned on the women and they took her away." "Tell me all you saw." "When you went in to hold council, I watched, and saw a priest and Bellenger and the boy that God had touched, all go in after you. So I knew the council would be bad for you, Lazarre, and I stood by the door with my knife in my hand. When the talk had gone on awhile I heard something like the dropping of a buck on the ground, and sprang in, and the men drew their swords and the women screamed. The priest pointed at you and said, 'God has smitten the pretender!' Then they all went out of the room except the priest, and we opened your collar. I told him you had fallen like that before, and the stroke passed off in sleep. He said your carriage waited, and if I valued your safety I would put you in it and take you out of Russia. He called servants to help me carry you. I thought about your jewels; but some drums began to beat, and I thought about your life!" "But, Skenedonk, didn't my sister--the lady I led by the hand, you remember--speak to me again, or look at me, or try to revive me?" "No. She went away with the women carrying her." "She believed in me--at first! Before I said a word she knew me! She wouldn't leave me merely because her uncle and a priest thought me an impostor! She is the tenderest creature on earth, Skenedonk--she is more like a saint than a woman!" "Some saints on the altar are blind and deaf," observed the Oneida. "I think she was sick." "I have nearly killed her! And I have been tumbled out of Mittau as a pretender!" "You are here. Get some men to fight, and we will go back." "What a stroke--to lose my senses at the moment I needed them most!" "You kept your scalp." "And not much else. No! If you refuse to follow me, and wait here at this post-house, I am going back to Mittau!" "I go where you go," said Skenedonk. "But best go to sleep now." This I was not able to do until long tossing on the thorns of chagrin wore me out. I was ashamed like a prodigal, baffled, and hurt to the bruising of my soul. A young man's chastened confidence in himself is hard to bear, but the loss of what was given as a heritage at birth is an injustice not to be endured. The throne of France was never my goal, to be reached through blood and revolution. Perhaps the democratic notions in my father's breast have found wider scope in mine. I wanted to influence men, and felt even at that time that I could do it; but being king was less to my mind than being acknowledged dauphin, and brother, and named with my real name. I took my fists in my hands and swore to force recognition, if I battered a lifetime on Mittau. At daylight our post-horses were put to the chaise and I gave the postilion orders myself. The little fellow bowed himself nearly double, and said that troops were moving behind us to join the allied forces against Napoleon. At once the prospect of being snared among armies and cut off from all return to Paris, appalled me as a greater present calamity than being cast out of Mittau. Mittau could wait for another expedition. "Very well," I said. "Take the road to France." We met August rains. We were bogged. A bridge broke under us. We dodged Austrian troops. It seemed even then a fated thing that a Frenchman should retreat ignominiously from Russia. There is a devilish antagonism of inanimate and senseless things, begun by discord in ourselves, which works unreasonable torture. Our return was an abominable journal which I will not recount, and going with it was a mortifying facility for drawing opposing forces. However, I knew my friend the marquis expected me to return defeated. He gave me my opportunity as a child is indulged with a dangerous plaything, to teach it caution. He would be in his chateau of Plessy, cutting off two days' posting to Paris. And after the first sharp pangs of chagrin and shame at losing the fortune he had placed in my hands, I looked forward with impatience to our meeting. "We have nothing, Skenedonk!" I exclaimed the first time there was occasion for money on the road. "How have you been able to post? The money and the jewel-case are gone." "We have two bags of money and the snuffbox," said the Oneida. "I hid them in the post-carriage." "But I had the key of the jewel-case." "You are a good sleeper," responded Skenedonk. I blessed him heartily for his forethought, and he said if he had known I was a fool he would not have told me we carried the jewel-case into Russia. I dared not let myself think of Madame de Ferrier. The plan of buying back her estates, which I had nurtured in the bottom of my heart, was now more remote than America. One bag of coin was spent in Paris, but three remained there with Doctor Chantry. We had money, though the more valuable treasure stayed in Mittau. In the sloping hills and green vines of Champagne we were no longer harassed dodging troops, and slept the last night of our posting at Epernay. Taking the road early next morning, I began to watch for Plessy too soon, without forecasting that I was not to set foot within its walls. We came within the marquis' boundaries upon a little goose girl, knitting beside her flock. Her bright hair was bound with a woolen cap. Delicious grass, and the shadow of an oak, under which she stood, were not to be resisted, so I sent the carriage on. She looked open-mouthed after Skenedonk, and bobbed her dutiful, frightened courtesy at me. The marquis' peasants were by no means under the influence of the Empire, as I knew from observing the lad whom he had sought among the drowned in the mortuary chapel of the Hotel Dieu, and who was afterwards found in a remote wine shop seeing sights. The goose girl dared not speak to me unless I required it of her, and the unusual notice was an honor she would have avoided. "What do you do here?" I inquired. Her little heart palpitated in the answer--"Oh, guard the geese." "Do they give you trouble?" "Not much, except that wicked gander." She pointed out with her knitting-needle a sleek white fellow, who flirted his tail and turned an eye, quavering as if he said--"La, la, la!" "What does he do?" "He would be at the vines and the corn, monsieur." "Bad gander!" "I switch him," she informed me, like a magistrate. "But that would only make him run." "Also I have a string in my pocket, and I tie him by the leg to a tree." "Serves him right. Is the Marquis du Plessy at the chateau?" Her face grew shaded, as a cloud chases sunlight before it across a meadow. "Do you mean the new marquis, the old marquis' cousin, monsieur? He went away directly after the burial." "What burial?"' "The old marquis' burial. That was before St. John's day." "Be careful what you say, my child!" "Didn't you know he was dead, monsieur?" "I have been on a journey. Was his death sudden?" "He was killed in a duel in Paris." I sat down on the grass with my head in my hands. Bellenger had told the truth. One scant month the Marquis du Plessy fostered me like a son. To this hour my slow heart aches for the companionship of the lightest, most delicate spirit I ever encountered in man. Once I lifted my head and insisted, "It can't be true!" "Monsieur," the goose girl asserted solemnly, "it is true. The blessed St. Alpin, my patron, forget me if I tell you a lie." Around the shadowed spot where I sat I heard trees whispering on the hills, and a cart rumbling along the hardened dust of the road. "Monsieur," spoke the goose girl out of her good heart, "if you want to go to his chapel I will show you the path." She tied a string around the leg of the wicked gander and attached him to the tree, shaking a wand at him in warning. He nipped her sleeve, and hissed, and hopped, his wives remonstrating softly; but his guardian left him bound and carried her knitting down a valley to a stream, across the bridge, and near an opening in the bushes at the foot of a hill. "Go all to the right, monsieur," she said, "and you will come to the chapel where the Du Plessys are buried." I gave her the largest coin in my pocket, and she flew back as well as the spirit of childhood could fly in wooden shoes. All the geese, formed in a line, waddled to meet her, perhaps bearing a memorial of wrongs from their husband. The climb was steep, rounding a darkened ferny shoulder of lush forest, yet promising more and more a top of sunlight. At the summit was a carriage road which ascended by some easier plane. Keeping all to the right as the goose girl directed, I found a chapel like a shrine. It was locked. Through the latticed door I could see an altar, whereunder the last Du Plessy who had come to rest there, doubtless lay with his kin. I sat down on one of the benches under the trees. The ache within me went deep. But all that sunny hillcrest seemed brightened by the marquis. It was cheerful as his smile. "Let us have a glass of wine and enjoy the sun," he said in the breeze flowing around his chapel. "And do you hear that little citizen of the tree trunks, Lazarre?" The perfume of the woods rose invisibly to a cloudless sky. My last tryst with my friend was an hour in paradise's antechamber. The light quick stepping of horses and their rattling harness brought Madame de Ferrier's carriage quickly around the curve fronting the chapel. Her presence was the one touch which the place lacked, and I forgot grief, shame, impatience at being found out in my trouble, and stood at her step with my hat in my hand. She said--"O Lazarre!"--and Paul beat on Ernestine's knee, echoing--"O Zar!" and my comfort was absolute as release from pain, because she had come to visit her old friend the marquis. I helped her down and stood with her at the latticed door. "How bright it is here!" said Eagle. "It is very bright. I came up the hill from a dark place." "Did the news of his death meet you on the post-road?" "It met me at the foot of this hill. The goose girl told me." "Oh, you have been hurt!" she said, looking at me. "Your face is all seamed. Don't tell me about Mittau to-day. Paul and I are taking possession of the estates!" "Napoleon has given them back to you!" "Yes, he has! I begged the De Chaumonts to let me come alone! By hard posting we reached Mont-Louis last night. You are the only person in France to whom I would give that vacant seat in the carriage to-day." I cared no longer for my own loss, as I am afraid has been too much my way all through life; or whether I was a prince or not. Like paradise after death, as so many of our best days come, this perfect day was given me by the marquis himself. Eagle's summer dress touched me. Paul and Ernestine sat facing us, and Paul ate cherries from a little basket, and had his fingers wiped, beating the cushion with his heels in excess of impatience to begin again. We paused at a turn of the height before descending, where fields could be seen stretching to the horizon, woods fair and clean as parks, without the wildness of the American forest, and vineyards of bushy vines that bore the small black grapes. Eagle showed me the far boundaries of Paul's estates. Then we drove where holly spread its prickly foliage near the ground, where springs from cliffs trickled across delicious lanes. Hoary stone farmhouses, built four-square like a fortress, each having a stately archway, saluted us as we passed by. The patron and his wife came out, and laborers, pulling their caps, dropped down from high-yoked horses. But when the long single street of stone cottages which formed the village opened its arms, I could see her breast swelling and her gray eyes sweeping all with comprehensive rush. An elderly man, shaking some salad in a wire basket, dropped it at his feet, and bowed and bowed, sweeping his cap to the ground. Some women who were washing around a roofed pool left their paddles, and ran, wiping suds from their arms; and houses discharged their inmates, babies in children's arms, wives, old men, the simplicity of their lives and the openness of their labor manifest. They surrounded the carriage. Eagle stood Paul upon his feet that they might worship him, and his mouth corners curled upward, his blue-eyed fearless look traveled from face to face, while her gloved hand was kissed, and God was praised that she had come back. "O Jean!" she cried, "is your mother alive?" and "Marguerite! have you a son so tall?" An old creature bent double, walked out on four feet, two of them being sticks, lifted her voice, and blessed Eagle and the child a quarter of an hour. Paul's mother listened reverently, and sent him in Ernestine's arms for the warped human being to look upon at close range with her failing sight. He stared at her unafraid, and experimentally put his finger on her knotted cheek; at which all the women broke into chorus as I have heard blackbirds rejoice. "I have not seen them for so long!" Madame de Ferrier said, wiping her eyes. "We have all forgotten our behavior!" An inverted pine tree hung over the inn door, and dinner was laid for us in its best room, where host and hostess served the marquise and the young marquis almost on their knees. When we passed out at the other end of the village, Eagle showed me a square-towered church. "The De Ferriers are buried there--excepting my father. I shall put a tablet in the wall for Cousin Philippe. Few Protestants in France had their rights and privileges protected as ours were by the throne. I mention this fact, sire, that you may lay it up in your mind! We have been good subjects, well worth our salt in time of war." Best of all was coming to the chateau when the sun was about an hour high. The stone pillars of the gateway let us upon a terraced lawn, where a fountain played, keeping bent plumes of water in the air. The lofty chateau of white stone had a broad front, with wings. Eagle bade me note the two dove-cotes or pigeon towers, distinctly separate structures, one flanking each wing, and demonstrating the antiquity of the house. For only nobles in medieval days were accorded the privilege of keeping doves. Should there be such another evening for me when I come to paradise, if God in His mercy brings me there, I shall be grateful, but hardly with such fresh-hearted joy. Night descends with special benediction on remote ancient homes like Mont-Louis. We walked until sunset in the park, by lake, and bridged stream, and hollied path; Ernestine carrying Paul or letting him pat behind, driving her by her long cap ribbons while he explored his mother's playground. But when the birds began to nest, and dewfall could be felt, he was taken to his supper and his bed, giving his mother a generous kiss, and me a smile of his upcurled mouth corners. His forehead was white and broad, and his blue eyes were set well apart. I can yet see the child looking over Ernestine's shoulder. She carried him up stairs of oak worn hollow like stone, a mighty hand-wrought balustrade rising with them from hall to roof. We had our supper in a paneled room where the lights were reflected as on mirrors of polished oak, and the man who served us had served Madame de Ferrier's father and grandfather. The gentle old provincial went about his duty as a religious rite. There was a pleached walk like that in the marquis' Paris garden, of branches flattened and plaited to form an arbor supported by tree columns; which led to a summer-house of stone smothered in ivy. We walked back and forth under this thick roof of verdure. Eagle's cap of brown hair was roughened over her radiant face, and the open throat of her gown showed pulses beating in her neck. Her lifted chin almost touched my arm as I told her all the Mittau story, at her request. "Poor Madame d'Angouleme! The cautious priest and the king should not have taken you from me like that! She knew you as I knew you; and a woman's knowing is better than a man's proofs. She will have times of doubting their policy. She will remember the expression of your mouth, your shrugs, and gestures--the little traits of the child Louis, that reappear in the man." "I wish I had never gone to Mittau to give her a moment's distress." "Is she very beautiful?" "She is like a lily made flesh. She has her strong dislikes, and one of them is Louis Philippe--" "Naturally," said Eagle. "But she seemed sacred to me. Perhaps a woman brings that hallowedness out of martyrdom." "God be with the royal lady! And you, sire!" "And you!--may you be always with me, Eagle!" "This journey to Mittau changes nothing. You were wilful. You would go to the island in Lake George: you would go to Mittau." "Both times you sent me." "Both times I brought you home! Let us not be sorrowful to-night." "Sorrowful! I am so happy it seems impossible that I come from Mittau, and this day the Marquis du Plessy died to me! I wish the sun had been tied to the trees, as the goose girl tied her gander." "But I want another day," said Eagle. "I want all the days that are my due at home." We ascended the steps of the stone pavilion, and sat down in an arch like a balcony over the sunken garden. Pears and apricots, their branches flattened against the wall, showed ruddy garnered sunlight through the dusk. The tangled enclosure sloped down to the stream, from which a fairy wisp of mist wavered over flower bed and tree. Dew and herbs and the fragrance of late roses sent up a divine breath, invisibly submerging us, like a tide rising out of the night. Madame de Ferrier's individual traits were surprised in this nearness, as they never had been when I saw her at a distance in alien surroundings. A swift ripple, involuntary and glad, coursed down her body; she shuddered for joy half a minute or so. Two feet away, I worshiped her smiling eyes and their curved ivory lids, her rounded head with its abundant cap of hair, her chin, her shoulders, her bust, the hands in her lap, the very sweep of her scant gown about her feet. The flash of extreme happiness passing, she said gravely, "But that was a strange thing--that you should fall unconscious!" "Not so strange," I said; and told her how many times before the eclipse--under the edge of which my boyhood was passed--had completely shadowed me. At the account of Ste. Pelagie she leaned toward me, her hands clenched on her breast. When we came to the Hotel Dieu she leaned back pallid against the stone. "Dear Marquis du Plessy!" she whispered, as his name entered the story. When it was ended she drew some deep breaths in the silence. "Sire, you must be very careful. That Bellenger is an evil man." "But a weak one." "There may be a strength of court policy behind him." "The policy of the court at Mittau is evidently a policy of denial." "Your sister believed in you." "Yes, she believed in me." "I don't understand," said Madame de Ferrier, leaning forward on her arms, "why Bellenger had you in London, and another boy on the mountain." "Perhaps we shall never understand it." "I don't understand why he makes it his business to follow you." "Let us not trouble ourselves about Bellenger." "But are you safe in France since the Marquis du Plessy's death?" "I am safe to-night, at least." "Yes, far safer than you would be in Paris." "And Skenedonk is my guard." "I have sent a messenger to Plessy for him," Madame de Ferrier said. "He will be here in the morning." I thanked her for remembering him in the excitement of her home coming. We heard a far sweet call through a cleft of the hills, and Eagle turned her head. "That must be the shepherd of Les Rochers. He has missed a lamb. Les Rochers is the most distant of our farms, but its night noises can be heard through an opening in the forest. Paul will soon be listening for all these sounds! We must drive to Les Rochers to-morrow. It was there that Cousin Philippe died." I could not say how opportunely Cousin Philippe had died. The violation of her childhood by such a marriage rose up that instant a wordless tragedy. "Sire, we are not observing etiquette in Mont-Louis as they observe it at Mittau. I have been talking very familiarly to my king. I will keep silent. You speak." "Madame, you have forbidden me to speak!" She gave me a startled look, and said, "Did you know Jerome Bonaparte has come back? He left his wife in America. She cannot be received in France, because she has committed the crime of marrying a prince. She is to be divorced for political reasons." "Jerome Bonaparte is a hound!" I spoke hotly. "And his wife a venturesome woman--to marry even a temporary prince." "I like her sort, madame!" "Do you, sire?" "Yes, I like a woman who can love!" "And ruin?" "How could you ruin me?" "The Saint-Michels brought me up," said Eagle. "They taught me what is lawful and unlawful. I will never do an unlawful thing, to the disgrace and shame of my house. A woman should build her house, not tear it down." "What is unlawful?" "It is unlawful for me to encourage the suit of my sovereign." "Am I ever likely to be anything but what they call in Mittau a pretender, Eagle?" "That we do not know. You shall keep yourself free from entanglements." "I am free from them--God knows I am free enough!--the lonesomest, most unfriended savage that ever set out to conquer his own." "You were born to greatness. Great things will come to you." "If you loved me I could make them come!" "Sire, it isn't healthy to sit in the night air. We must go out of the dew." "Oh, who would be healthy! Come to that, who would be such a royal beggar as I am?" "Remember," she said gravely, "that your claim was in a manner recognized by one of the most cautious, one of the least ardent royalists, in France." The recognition she knew nothing about came to my lips, and I told her the whole story of the jewels. The snuffbox was in my pocket. Sophie Saint-Michel had often described it to her. She sat and looked at me, contemplating the stupendous loss. "The marquis advised me not to take them into Russia," I acknowledged. "There is no robbery so terrible as the robbery committed by those who think they are doing right." "I am one of the losing Bourbons." "Can anything be hidden in that closet in the queen's dressing-room wall?" mused Eagle. "I believe I could find it in the dark, Sophie told me so often where the secret spring may be touched. When the De Chaumonts took me to the Tuileries I wanted to search for it. But all the state apartments are now on the second floor, and Madame Bonaparte has her own rooms below. Evidently she knows nothing of the secrets of the place. The queen kept her most beautiful robes in that closet. It has no visible door. The wall opens. And we have heard that a door was made through the back of it to let upon a spiral staircase of stone, and through this the royal family made their escape to Varennes, when they were arrested and brought back." We fell into silence at mention of the unsuccessful flight which could have changed history; and she rose and said--"Good-night, sire." Next morning there was such a delicious world to live in that breathing was a pleasure. Dew gauze spread far and wide over the radiant domain. Sounds from cattle, and stables, and the voices of servants drifted on the air. Doves wheeled around their towers, and around the chateau standing like a white cliff. I walked under the green canopy watching the sun mount and waiting for Madame de Ferrier. When she did appear the old man who had served her father followed with a tray. I could only say--"Good-morning, madame," not daring to add--"I have scarcely slept for thinking of you." "We will have our coffee out here," she told me. It was placed on the broad stone seat under the arch of the pavilion where we sat the night before; bread, unsalted butter from the farms, the coffee, the cream, the loaf sugar. Madame de Ferrier herself opened a door in the end of the wall and plunged into the dew of the garden. Her old servant exclaimed. She caught her hair in briers and laughed, tucking it up from falling, and brought off two great roses, each the head and the strength of a stem, to lay beside our plates. The breath of roses to this hour sends through my veins the joy of that. Then the old servant gathered wall fruit for us, and she sent some in his hand to Paul. Through a festooned arch of the pavilion giving upon the terraces, we saw a bird dart down to the fountain, tilt and drink, tilt and drink again, and flash away. Immediately the multitudinous rejoicing of a skylark dropped from upper air. When men would send thanks to the very gate of heaven their envoy should be a skylark. Eagle was like a little girl as she listened. "This is the first day of September, sire." "Is it? I thought it was the first day of creation." "I mention the date that you may not forget it. Because I am going to give you something to-day." My heart leaped like a conqueror's. Her skin was as fresh as the roses, looking marvelous to touch. The shock of imminent discovery went through me. For how can a man consider a woman forever as a picture? A picture she was, in the short-waisted gown of the Empire, of that white stuff Napoleon praised because it was manufactured in France. It showed the line of her throat, being parted half way down the bosom by a ruff which encircled her neck and stood high behind it. The transparent sleeves clung to her arms, and the slight outline of her figure looked long in its close casing. The gown tail curled around her slippered foot damp from the plunge in the garden. She gave it a little kick, and rippled again suddenly throughout her length. Then her face went grave, like a child's when it is surprised in wickedness. "But our fathers and mothers would have us forget their suffering in the festival of coming home, wouldn't they, Lazarre?" "Surely, Eagle." "Then why are you looking at me with reproach?" "I'm not." "Perhaps you don't like my dress?" I told her it was the first time I had ever noticed anything she wore, and I liked it. "I used to wear my mother's clothes. Ernestine and I made them over. But this is new; for the new day, and the new life here." "And the day," I reminded her, "is the first of September." She laughed, and opened her left hand, showing me two squat keys so small that both had lain concealed under two of her finger tips. "I am going to give you a key, sire." "Will it unlock a woman's mind?" "It will open a padlocked book. Last night I found a little blank-leaved book, with wooden covers. It was fastened by a padlock, and these keys were tied to it. You may have one key: I will keep the other." "The key to a padlocked book with nothing in it." Her eyes tantalized me. "I am going to put something in it. Sophie Saint-Michel said I had a gift for putting down my thoughts. If the gift appeared to Sophie when I was a child, it must grow in me by use. Every day I shall put some of my life into the book. And when I die I will bequeath it to you!" "Take back the key, madame. I have no desire to look into your coffin." She extended her hand. "Then our good and kind friend Count de Chaumont shall have it." "He shall not!" I held to her hand and kept my key. She slipped away from me. The laughter of the child yet rose through the dignity of the woman. "When may I read this book, Eagle?" "Never, of my free will, sire. How could I set down all I thought about you, for instance, if the certainty was hanging over me that you would read my candid opinions and punish me for them!" "Then of what use is the key?" "You would rather have it than give it to another, wouldn't you?" "Decidedly." "Well, you will have the key to my thoughts!" "And if the book ever falls into my hands--" "I will see that it doesn't!" "I will say, years from now--" "Twenty?" "Twenty? O Eagle!" "Ten." "Months? That's too long!" "No, ten years, sire." "Not ten years, Eagle. Say eight." "No, nine." "Seven. If the book falls into my hands at the end of seven years, may I open it?" "I may safely promise you that," she laughed. "The book will never fall into your hands." I took from my pocket the gold snuffbox with the portraits on the lid, and placed my key carefully therein. Eagle leaned forward to look at them. She took the box in her hand, and gazed with long reverence, drooping her head. Young as I was, and unskilled in the ways of women, that key worked magic comfort. She had given me a link to hold us together. The inconsistent, contradictory being, old one instant with the wisdom of the Saint-Michels, rippling full of unrestrained life the next, denying me all hope, yet indefinitely tantalizing, was adorable beyond words. I closed my eyes: the blinding sunshine struck them through the ivied arch. Turning my head as I opened them, I saw an old man come out on the terrace. He tried to search in every direction, his gray head and faded eyes moving anxiously. Madame de Ferrier was still. I heard her lay the snuffbox on the stone seat. I knew, though I could not let myself watch her, that she stood up against the wall, a woman of stone, her lips chiseled apart. "Eagle--Eagle!" the old man cried from the terrace. She whispered--"Yes, Cousin Philippe!"