Denise paused in the entrance, and turned to him.

"Seriously," she said, "do you advise me to accept this offer to sell Perucca?"

"I scarcely feel authorized to give you any advice upon the subject," answered Lory, reluctantly. "Though, after all, we are neighbours."

"Then—"

"Then, I should say not, mademoiselle. At all events, do nothing in haste. And, if I may ask it, will you communicate with me before you finally decide?"

They had come in an open cab, which was waiting on the shady side of the street.

"A young man who changes his mind very quickly," commented Mademoiselle Brun, as they drove away.



CHAPTER VII.

JOURNEY'S END.

"The offender never pardons."

De Vasselot returned to the Baroness de Melide's pretty drawing-room, and there, after the manner of his countrymen, made himself agreeable in that vivacious manner which earns the contempt of all honest and, if one may say so, thick-headed Englishmen. He laughed with one, and with another almost wept. Indeed, to see him sympathize with an elderly countess whose dog was grievously ill, one could only conclude that he too had placed all his affections upon a canine life.

He outstayed the others, and then, holding out his hand to the baroness, said curtly—

"Good-bye."

"Good-bye! What do you mean?"

"I am going to Corsica," he explained airily.

"But where did you get that idea, mon ami?"

"It came. A few moments ago, I made up my mind." And, with a gesture, he described the arrival of the idea, apparently from heaven, upon his head, and then a sideward jerk of the arm seemed to indicate the sudden and irrevocable making up of his own mind.

"But what for?" cried the lady. "You were not even born there. Your father died thirty years ago—you will not even find his tomb. Your dear mother left the place in horror, just before you were born. Besides, you promised her that you would never return to Corsica—and she who has been dead only five years! Is it filial, I ask you, my cousin? Is it filial?"

"Such a promise, of course, only held good during her lifetime," answered Lory. "Since there is no one left behind to be anxious on my account, it is assuredly no one's affair whether I go or stay."

"And now you are asking me to say it will break my heart if you go," said the baroness, with a gay glance of her brown eyes; "and you may ask—and ask!"

She shook hands as she spoke.

"Go, ingratitude!" she said. "But tell me, what will bring you back?"

"War," he answered, with a laugh, pausing for a moment on the threshold.

And three days later Lory de Vasselot stood on the deck of a small trading steamer that rolled sideways into Calvi Bay, on the shoulder, as it were, of one of those March mistrals which serve as the last kick of the dying winter. De Vasselot had taken the first steamer he could find at Marseilles, with a fine disregard for personal comfort, which was part of his military training and parcel of his sporting instincts. He was, like many islanders, a good sailor, for, strange as it may seem, a man may inherit from his forefathers not only a taste for the sea, but a stout heart to face its grievous sickness.

There are few finer sights than Calvi Bay when the heavens are clear and the great mountains of the interior tower above the bare coast-hills. But now the clouds hung low over the island, and the shape of the heights was only suggested by a deeper shadow in the grey mist. The little town nestling on a promontory looked gloomy and deserted with its small square houses and medieval fortress—Calvi the faithful, that fought so bravely for the Genoese masters whose mark lies in every angle of its square stronghold; Calvi, where, if (as seems likely) the local historian is to be believed, the greatest of all sailors was born, within a day's ride of that other sordid little town where the greatest of all soldiers first saw the light. Assuredly Corsica has done its duty—has played its part in the world's history—with Christopher Columbus and Napoleon as leading actors.

De Vasselot landed in a small boat, carrying his own simple luggage. He had not been very sociable on the trading steamer; had dined with the captain, and now bade him farewell without an exchange of names. There is a small inn on the wharf facing the anchorage and the wave-washed steps where the fishing-boats lie. Here the traveller had a better lunch than the exterior of the house would appear to promise, and found it easy enough to keep his own counsel; for he was now in Corsica, where silence is not only golden, but speech is apt to be fatal.

"I am going to St. Florent," he said to the woman who had waited on him. "Can I have a carriage or a horse? I am indifferent which."

"You can have a horse," was the reply, "and leave it at Rutali's at St. Florent when you have done with it. The price is ten francs. There are parts of the road impassable for a carriage in this wind."

De Vasselot replied by handing her ten francs, and asked no further questions. If you wish to answer no questions, ask none.

The horse presently appeared, a little thin beast, all wires, carrying its head too high, boring impatiently—masterful, intractable.

"He wants riding," said the man who led him to the door, half sailor, half stableman, who made fast de Vasselot's portmanteau to the front of the high Spanish saddle with a piece of tarry rope and simple nautical knots.

He nodded curtly, with an upward jerk of the head, as Lory climbed into the saddle and rode away; for there is nothing so difficult to conceal as horsemanship.

"A soldier," muttered the stable-man. "A gendarme, as likely as not."

De Vasselot did not ask the way, but trusted to Fortune, who as usual favoured him who left her a free hand. There is but one street in Calvi, but one way out of the town, and a cross-road leading north and south. Lory turned to the north. He had a map in his pocket, which he knew almost by heart; for he was an officer of the finest cavalry in the world, and knew his business as well as any. And it is the business of the individual trooper to find his way in an unknown country. That a couple of hours' hard riding brought him to his own lands, de Vasselot knew not nor heeded, for he was aware that he could establish his rights only by force of martial law, and with a miniature army at his back; for civil law here is paralyzed by a cloud of false witnesses, while equity is administered by a jury which is under the influence of the two strongest of human motives, greed and fear.

At times the solitary rider mounted into the clouds that hung low upon the hills, shutting in the valleys beneath their grey canopy, and again descended to deep gorges; where brown water churned in narrow places. And at all times he was alone. For the Government has built roads through these rocky places, but it has not yet succeeded in making traffic upon them.

With the quickness of his race de Vasselot noted everything—the trend of the watersheds, the colour of the water, the prevailing wind as indicated by the growth of the trees—a hundred petty details of Nature which would escape any but a trained comprehension, or that wonderful eye with which some men are born, who cannot but be gipsies all their lives, whether fate has made them rich or poor; who cannot live in towns, but must breathe the air of open heaven, and deal by sea or land with the wondrous works of God.

It was growing dusk when de Vasselot crossed the bridge that spans the Aliso—his own river, that ran through and all around his own land—and urged his tired horse along the level causeway built across the old river-bed into the town of St. Florent. The field-workers were returning from vineyard and olive grove, but appeared to take little heed of him as he trotted past them on the dusty road. These were no heavy, agricultural boors, of the earth earthy, but lithe, dark-eyed men and women, who tilled the ground grudgingly, because they had no choice between that and starvation. Their lack of curiosity arose, not from stupidity, but from a sort of pride which is only seen in Spain and certain South American States. The proudest man is he who is sufficient for himself.

A single inquiry enabled de Vasselot to find the house of Rutali; for St. Florent is a small place, with Ichabod written large on its crumbling houses. It was a house like another—that is to say, the ground floor was a stable, while the family lived above in an atmosphere of its own and the stable drainage.

The traveller gave Rutali a small coin, which was coldly accepted—for a Corsican never refuses money like a Spaniard, but accepts it grudgingly, mindful of the insult—and left St. Florent by the road that he had come, on foot, humbly carrying his own portmanteau. Thus Lory de Vasselot, went through his paternal acres with a map. His intention was to catch a glimpse of the Chateau de Vasselot, and walk on to the village of Olmeta, and there beg bed and board from his faithful correspondent, the Abbe Susini.

He followed the causeway across the marsh to the mouth of the river, and here turned to the left, leaving the route nationale to Calvi on the right. That which he now followed was the narrower route departementale, which borders the course of the stream Guadelle, a tributary to the Aliso. The valley is flat here—a mere level of river deposit, damp in winter, but dry and sandy in the autumn. Here are cornfields and vineyards all in one, with olives and almonds growing amid the wheat—a promised land of milk and honey. There are no walls, but great hedges of aloe and prickly pear serve as a sterner landmark. At the side of the road are here and there a few crosses—the silent witnesses that stand on either side of every Corsican road—marking the spot where such and such a one met his death, or was found dead by his friends.

Above, perched on the slope that rises abruptly on the left-hand side of the road, the village of Oletta looks out over the plain towards St. Florent and the sea—a few brown houses of dusky stone, with roofs of stone; a square-towered church, built just where the cultivation ceases and the rocks and the macquis begin.

De Vasselot quitted the road where it begins sharply to ascend, and took the narrow path that follows the course of the river, winding through the olive groves around the great rock that forms a shoulder of Monte Torre, and breaks off abruptly in a sheer cliff. He looked upward with a soldier's eye at this spot, designed by nature as the site of a fort which could command the whole valley and the roads to Corte and Calvi. Far above, amid chestnut trees and some giant pines, De Vasselot could see the roof and the chimneys of a house—it was the Casa Perucca. Presently he was so immediately below it that he could see it no longer as he followed the path, winding as the river wound through the narrow flat valley.

Suddenly he came out of the defile into a vast open country, spread out like a fan upon a gentle slope rising to the height of the Col St. Stefano, where the Bastia road comes through the Lancone defile—the road by which Colonel Gilbert had ridden to the Casa Perucca not so very long before. At the base of the fan runs the Aliso, without haste, bordered on either bank by oleanders growing like rushes. Halfway down the slope is a lump of land which looks like, and probably is, a piece of the mountain cast off by some subterranean disturbance, and gently rolled down into the valley. It stands alone, and on its summit, three hundred feet above the plain, are the square-built walls of what was once a castle.

Lory stood for a moment and looked at this prospect, now pink and hazy in the reflected light of the western sky. He knew that he was looking at the Chateau de Vasselot.

Within the crumbling walls, built on the sheer edge of the rock, stood, amid a disorderly thicket of bamboo and feathery pepper and deep copper beech, a square stone house with smokeless chimneys, and, so far as was visible, every shutter shut. The owner of it and all these lands, the bearer of the name that was written here upon the map, walked slowly out into the open country. He turned once and looked back at the towering cliff behind him, the rocky peninsula where the Casa Perucca stood amidst its great trees, and hid the village of Olmeta, perched on the mountain side behind it.

The short winter twilight was almost gone before de Vasselot reached the base of the mound of half-shattered rock upon which the chateau had been built. The wall that had once been the outer battlement of the old stronghold was so fallen into disrepair that he anticipated no difficulty in finding a gap through which to pass within the enclosure where the house was hidden; but he walked right round and found no such breach. Where the wall of rock proved vulnerable, the masonry, by some curious chance, was invariably sound.

It had not been de Vasselot's intention to disturb the old gardener, who, he understood, was left in charge of the crumbling house, but to return the next day with the Abbe Susini. But he was tired, and having failed to gain an entrance, was put out and angry, when at length he found himself near the great door built in the solid wall on the north-west side of the ruin. A rusty bell-chain was slowly swinging in the wind, which was freshening again at sunset, as the mistral nearly always does when it is dying. With some difficulty he succeeded in swinging the heavy bell suspended inside the door, so that it gave two curt clangs as of a rusty tongue against moss-grown metal.

After some time the door was opened by a grey-haired man in his shirt-sleeves. He wore a huge black felt hat, and the baggy corduroy trousers of a deep brown, which are almost universal in this country. He held the door half open and peered out. Then he slowly opened it and stood back.

"Good God!" he whispered. "Good God!"

De Vasselot stepped over the threshold with one quick glance at the single-barrelled gun in the man's hand.

"I am—" he began.

"Yes," interrupted the other, breathlessly. "Straight on; the door is open."

Half puzzled, Lory de Vasselot advanced towards the house alone; for the peasant was long in closing the door and readjusting chain and bolts. The shutters of the house were all closed, but the door, as he had said, was open. The place was neatly enough kept, and the house stood on a lawn of that brilliant green turf which is only seen in parts of England, in Ireland, and in Corsica.

De Vasselot went into the house, which was all dark by reason of the closed shutters. There was a large room, opposite to the front door, dimly indicated by the daylight behind him. He went into it, and was going straight to one of the windows to throw back the shutters, when a sharp click brought him round on his heels as if he had been shot. In a far corner of the room, in a dark doorway, stood a shadow. The click was that of a trigger.

Quick as thought de Vasselot ran to the window, snatched at the opening, opened it, threw back the shutter, and was round again with bright and flashing eyes facing the doorway. A man stood there watching him—a man of his own build, slight and quick, with close upright hair like his own, but it was white; with a neat upturned moustache like his own, but it was white; with a small quick face like his own, but it was bleached. The eyes that flashed back were dark like his own.

"You are a de Vasselot," said this man, quickly.

"Are you Lory de Vasselot?"

"Yes."

"Then I am your father."

"Yes," said Lory, slowly; "there is no mistaking it."



CHAPTER VIII.

AT VASSELOT.

"The life unlived, the deed undone, the tear unshed ... not judging those, who judges right?"

It was the father who spoke first.

"Shut that shutter, my friend," he said. "It has not been opened for thirty years."

He had an odd habit of jerking his head upwards and sideways with raised eyebrows. It would appear that a trick of thus deploring some unavoidable misfortune had crystallized itself, as it were, into a habit by long use. And the old man rarely spoke now without this upward jerk.

Lory closed the shutter and followed his father into an adjoining room—a small, round apartment lighted by a skylight and impregnated with tobacco-smoke. The carpet was worn into holes in several places, and the boards beneath were polished by the passage of smooth soles. Lory glanced at his father's feet, which were encased in carpet slippers several sizes too large for him, bought at a guess in the village shop.

Here again the two men stood and looked at each other. And again it was the father who broke the silence.

"My son," he said, half to himself; "and a soldier. Your mother was a bad woman, mon ami. And I have lived thirty years in this room," he concluded simply.

"Name of God!" exclaimed Lory. "And what have you done all this time?"

"Carnations," replied the old man, gravely. "There is still daylight. Come; I will show you. Yes; carnations."

As he spoke he turned and opened the door behind him. It led out to a small terrace no larger than a verandah, and every inch of earth was occupied by the pale green of carnation-spikes. Some were budding, some in bloom. But there was not a flower among them at which a modern gardener would not have laughed aloud. And there were tears in Lory de Vasselot's eyes as he looked at them.

The father stood, jerking his head and looking at his son, waiting his verdict.

"Yes," was the son's reply at last; "yes—very pretty."

"But to-night you cannot see them," said the old man, earnestly. "To-morrow morning—we shall get up early, eh?"

"Yes," said Lory, slowly; and they went back into the little windowless room.

"We will get up early," said the count, "to see the pinks. This cursed mistral beats them to pieces, but I have no other place to grow them. It is the only spot that is not overlooked by Perucca."

He spoke slowly and indifferently, as if his spirit had been bleached, like his face, by long confinement. He had lost his grip of the world and of human interests. As he looked at his son, his black eyes had a sort of irresponsible vagueness in their glance.

"Tell me," said Lory, gently, at length, as if he were speaking to a child; "why have you done this?"

"Then you did not know that I was alive?" inquired his father in return, with an uncanny, quiet laugh, as he sat down.

"No."

"No; no one knows that—no one but the Abbe Susini and Jean there. You saw Jean as you came in. He recognized you or he would not have let you in; for he is quick with his gun. He shot a man seven years ago—one of Perucca's men, of course, who was creeping up through the tamarisk trees. I do not know what he came seeking, but he got more from Jean than he looked for. Jean was a boy when your mother went to France, and he was left in charge of the chateau. For they all thought that I had gone to France with your mother, and perhaps the police searched France for me; I do not know. There is a warrant out against me still, though the paper it is written on must be yellow enough after thirty years."

As he spoke he carefully drew up his trousers, which were of corduroy, like Jean's; indeed, the Count de Vasselot was dressed like a peasant—but no rustic dress could conceal the tale told by the small energetic head, the clean-cut features. It was obvious that his thoughts were more concerned in his immediate environments—in the care, for instance, to preserve his trousers from bagging at the knee—than he was in the past. He had the curious, slow touch and contemplative manner of the prisoner.

"Yes; Jean was a boy when he first came here, and now he is a grey-haired man, as you see. He picks the olives and earns a little by selling them. Besides, I provided myself with money long ago, before—before I died. I thought I might live long, and I have, for thirty years, like a tree."

Which was nearly true, for his life must have been somewhere midway between the human and the vegetable.

"But why, my God!" cried Lory, impatiently, "why have you done it?"

"Why?" echoed the count, in his calm and suppressed way. "Why? Because I am a Corsican, and am not to be frightened into leaving the country by a parcel of Peruccas. They are no better than the Luccans you see working in the road, and the miserable Pisans who come in the winter to build the terraces. They are no Corsicans, but come from Pisa."

"But if they thought you were dead, what satisfaction could there be in living on here?"

But the count only looked at his son in silence. He did not seem to follow the hasty argument. He had the placid air of a child or a very old man, who will not argue.

"Besides, Mattei Perucca is dead."

"So they say. So Jean tells me. I have not seen the abbe lately. He does not dare to come more often than once in three months—four times a year. Mattei Perucca dead!" He shook his head with the odd, upward jerk and the weary smile. "I should like to see his carcass," he said.

Then, after a pause, he went back to his original train of thought.

"We are different," he said. "We are Corsicans. It was only when the Bonapartes changed their name to a French one that your great-grandfather Gallicized ours. We are not to be frightened away by the Peruccas."

"But since he is dead—" said Lory, with an effort to be patient.

He was beginning to realize now that it was all real and not a dream, that this was the Chateau de Vasselot, and this was his father—this little, vague, quiet man, who seemed to exist and speak as if he were only half alive.

"He may be," was the answer; "but that will make no difference, since for one adherent that we have the Peruccas have twenty. There are a thousand men between Cap Corse and Balagna who, if I went outside this door and was recognized, would shoot me like a rat."

"But why?"

"Because they are of Perucca's clan, my friend," replied the count, with a shrug of the shoulder.

"But still I ask why?" persisted Lory.

And the count spread out his thin white hands with a gesture of patient indifference.

"Well, of course I shot Andrei Perucca—the brother—thirty years ago. We all know that. That is ancient history."

Lory looked at the little white-haired, placid man, and said no word. It was perhaps the wisest thing to do. When you have nothing to say, say nothing.

"But he has had his revenge—that Mattel Perucca," said the count at length, in a tone of careless reminiscence—"by living in that house all these years, and, so they tell me, by making a small fortune out of the vines. The house is not his, the land is not his. They are mine. Only he and I knew it, and to prove it I should have to come to life. Besides, what is land in this country, unless you till it with a spade in one hand and a gun in the other?"

Lory de Vasselot leant forward in his chair.

"But now is the time to act," he said. "I can act if you will not. I can make use of the law." "The law," answered his father, calmly. "Do you think that you could get a jury in Bastia to give you a verdict? Do you think you could find a witness who would dare to appear in your favour? No, my friend. There is no law in this country, except that;" and he pointed to a gun in the corner of the room, an old-fashioned muzzle-loader, with which he had had the law of Andrei Perucca thirty years before.

"But now that there is no Perucca left the clan will cease to exist," said Lory.

"Not at all," replied the father. "The inheritor of the estate, whoever it is, will become the head of the clan, and things will be as they were before. They tell me it is a woman named Denise Lange."

Lory gave a start. He had forgotten Denise Lange, and all that world of Paris fad and fashion.

"And the women are always the worst," concluded his father.

They sat in silence for some moments. And then the count spoke again in his odd, detached way, as if he were contemplating his environments from afar.

"There was a man in Sartene who had an enemy. He was a shoemaker, and could therefore work at his trade indoors. He never crossed his threshold for sixteen years. One day they told him his enemy was dead, that the funeral was for the same afternoon. It passed his door, and when it had gone by, he stepped out, after sixteen, years, to watch it, and—Paff! He twisted himself round as he writhed on the ground, and there was his enemy, laughing, with the smoke still at the muzzle. The funeral was a trick. No; I shall not believe that Mattei Perucca is dead until the Abbe Susini tells me that he has seen the body. Not that it would make any difference. I should not go outside the door. I am accustomed to this life now."

He sat with his hands idly crossed on his knee, and looked at nothing in particular. Nothing could arouse him now from his apathy, except perhaps the culture of carnations—certainly not the arrival of the son whom he had never seen. He had that air of waiting without expectancy which is assuredly the dungeon mark, and a moral mourning worn for dead Hope.

Lory contemplated him as a strange old man who interested him despite himself. There was pity, but nothing filial in his feelings. For filial love only grows out of propinquity and a firm respect which must keep pace with the growing demands of a daily increasing comprehension.

"Why did you come?" asked the count, suddenly.

It seemed as if his mind lay hidden under the accumulated debris of the years, as the old chateau perhaps lay hidden beneath that smooth turf which only grows over ruins.

"I do not know," answered Lory, thoughtfully. Then he turned in his quick way, and looked at his father with a smile. "Perhaps it was the good God who put the idea into my head, for it came quite suddenly. We shall grow accustomed to each other, and then we may find perhaps that it was a good thing that I came."

The count looked at him with rather a puzzled air, as if he did not quite understand.

"Yes," he said at length—"yes; perhaps so. I thought it likely that you would come. Do you mean to stay?"

"I do not know. I have not thought yet. I have had no time to think. I only know I am hungry. Perhaps Jean will get me something to eat."

"I have not dined yet," said the count, simply. "Yes; we will dine."

He rose, and, going to the door, called Jean, who came, and a whispered consultation ensued. From out of the debris of his mind the count seemed to have unearthed the fact that he was a gentleman, and as such was called upon to exercise an unsparing hospitality. He rather impeded than helped the taciturn man, who seemed to be gardener and servant all in one, and who now prepared the table, setting thereon linen and glass and silver of some value. There was excellent wine, and over the simple meal the father and son, in a jerky, explosive way, made merry. For Lory was at heart a Frenchman, and the French know, better than any, how near together tears and laughter must ever be, and have less difficulty in snatching a smile from sad environments than other men.

It was only as he finally cleared the table that Joan broke his habitual silence.

"The moon is up," he said to the count, and that was all.

The old man rose at once, and went to a window, which had hitherto been shuttered and barred.

"I sometimes look out," he said, "when there is a moon."

With odd, slow movements he opened the shutter and window, and, turning, invited Lory by a jerk of the head to come and look. The moon, which must have been at the full, was behind the chateau, and therefore invisible. Before them, in a framework of giant pines that have no match in Europe, lay a panorama of rolling plain and gleaming river. Far away towards Calvi and the south, range after range of rugged mountain melted into a distance, where the snow-clad summits of Cinto and Grosso stood majestically against the sky. The clouds had vanished. It was almost twilight under the southern moon. To the right the sea lay shimmering.

"I did not know that there was anything like it in Europe," said Lory, after a long pause.

"There is nothing like it," answered his father, gravely, "in the world."

Father and son were still standing at the open window, when Jean came hurriedly into the room.

"It is the abbe," he said, and went out again. The count stepped down from the raised window recess, and turned up the lamp, which he had lowered. Lory paused to close the shutter, and as he did so the Abbe Susini came into the room without looking towards the window, which was near the door by which he entered, without, therefore, seeing Lory. He hurried into the room, and stopped dead, facing the count. He threw out one finger, and pointed at his interlocutor as he spoke, in his quick dramatic way.

"I have just seen a man from Calvi. One landed there this morning whom he recognized. It could only have been your son. If one recognizes him, another may. Is the boy mad to return thus—"

He broke off, and made a step nearer, peering into the count's face.

"You know something. I see it in your face. You know where he is."

"He is there," said the count, pointing over the priest's shoulder.

"Then God bless him," said the Abbe Susini, turning on his heel.



CHAPTER IX.

THE PROMISED LAND.

"I do not ask that flowers should always spring beneath my feet."

Colonel Gilbert was not one of those visionaries who think that the lot of the individual man is to be bettered by a change from, say, an empire to a republic. Indeed, the late transformation from a republic to an empire had made no difference to him, for he was neither a friend nor a foe of the emperor. He had nothing in common with those soldiers of the Second Empire who had won their spurs in the Tuileries, and owed promotion to a woman's favouritism. He was, in a word, too good a soldier to be a good courtier; and politics represented for him, as they do for most wise men, an after-breakfast interest, and an edifying study of the careers of a certain number of persons who mean to make themselves a name in the easiest arena that is open to ambition.

The colonel read the newspapers because there was little else to do in Bastia, and the local gossip "on tap," as it were, at the cafes and the "Reunion des Officiers," had but a limited interest for him. He was, however, at heart a gossip, and rode or walked through the streets of Bastia with that leisurely air which seems to invite the passer-by to stop and exchange something more than a formal salutation.

The days, indeed, were long enough; for his service often got the colonel out of bed at dawn, and his work was frequently done before civilians were awake. It thus happened that Colonel Gilbert was riding along the coast-road from Brando to Bastia one morning before the sun had risen very high above the heights of Elba. The day was so clear that not only were the rocky islands of Gorgona and Capraja and Monte Cristo visible, but also the mysterious flat Pianosa, so rarely seen, so capricious and singular in its comings and goings that it fades from sight before the very eyes, and in clear weather seems to lie like a raft on the still water.

The colonel was contemplating the scene with a leisurely, artistic eye, when some instinct made him turn his head and look over his shoulder towards the north.

"Ah!" he muttered, with a nod of satisfaction.

A steamer was slowly pounding down towards Bastia. It was the Marseilles boat—the old Perseverance. And for Colonel Gilbert she was sure to bring news from France, possibly some one with whom to while away an hour or so in talk. He rode more leisurely now, and the steamer passed him. By the time he reached the dried-fruit factory on the northern outskirt of the town, the Perseverance had rounded the pier-head, and was gently edging alongside the quay. By the time he reached the harbour she was moored, and her captain enjoying a morning cigar on the wharf.

Of course Colonel Gilbert knew the captain of the Perseverance. Was he not friendly with the driver of the St. Florent diligence? All who brought news from the outside world were the friends of this idle soldier.

"Good morning, captain," he cried. "What news of France?"

The captain was a jovial man, with unkempt hair and a smoke-grimed face.

"News, colonel," he answered. "It is not quite ready yet. The emperor is always brewing it in the Tuileries, but it is not ripe for the public palate yet."

"Ah!"

"And in the mean time," said the captain, testing with his foot the tautness of the hawser that moored the Perseverance to the quay—"in the mean time they are busy at Cherbourg and Toulon. As to the army, you probably know that better than I, mon colonel."

And he finished with his jovial laugh. Then he jerked his thumb in the direction of the steamer.

"Your newspapers are, no doubt, in the mail-bags," he said. "We had a good passage, and are a full ship. Of passengers I have two—and ladies. One, by the way, is the heiress of Mattei Perucca over at Olmeta, whom you doubtless knew."

The colonel turned, and looked towards the steamer with some interest.

"Is that so?" he said reflectively.

"Yes; a pinched old maid in a black dress. None will marry her for her acres. It will be a pre sale with a vengeance. I caught a glimpse of her as we came out of harbour. I did not see the other, who is young—her niece, I understand. There she is, coming on deck now—the heiress, I mean. She will not look her best after a night at sea."

And, with a jerk of the head, he indicated a black-clad form on the deck of the Perseverance. It happened to be Mademoiselle Brun, who, as a matter of fact, looked no different after a night at sea to what she had looked in the drawing-room of the Baroness de Melide. She was too old or too tough to take her colour from her environments. She was standing with her back towards the quay, talking to the steward, and did not, therefore, see the colonel until the clank of his spurred heel on the deck made her turn sharply.

"You, mademoiselle!" exclaimed the colonel, on seeing her face as he stood, kepi in hand, staring at her in astonishment.

"Yes; I am the ogre chosen by Fate to watch over Denise Lange," she answered, holding out her withered hand.

"But this is indeed a pleasure," said the colonel, with his ready smile. "I came by a mere accident to offer my services, as any Frenchman would, to ladies arriving at such a place as Bastia, as a friend, moreover, of Mattel Perucca, and never expected to see a face I knew. It is years, mademoiselle, since we met—since before the war—before Solferino."

"Yes," said Mademoiselle Brun; "since before Solferino."

And she glanced suspiciously at him, as if she had something to hide. A chance word often is the "open sesame" to that cupboard where we keep our cherished skeleton. Colonel Gilbert saw the quick glance, and misconstrued it.

"I wrote a letter some time ago," he said, "to Mademoiselle Lange, making her an offer for her property, little dreaming that I had so old a friend as yourself at hand, as one may say, to introduce us to each other."

"No," said Mademoiselle Brun.

"And I was surprised to receive a refusal."

"Yes," said Mademoiselle Brun, looking across the harbour towards the old town.

"There are not many buyers of land in Corsica," he explained, half indifferently, "and there are plenty of other plots which would serve my purpose. However, I will not buy elsewhere until you and Mademoiselle Lange have had an opportunity of seeing Perucca—that is certain. No; it is only friendly to keep my offer open."

He was standing with his face turned towards the deck-house and the saloon stairway, and tapped his boot idly with his whip. There was something expectant and almost anxious in his demeanour. Mademoiselle Brun was looking at his face, and he was perhaps not aware that it changed at this moment.

"Yes," she said, without looking round; "that is my niece. You find her pretty?"

"Present me," answered the colonel, turning to hook his sword to his belt.

Denise came hurriedly across the deck, her eyes bright with anticipation and happiness. This was a better life than that of the Rue du Cherche-Midi, and the stir and bustle of the sailors, already at work on the cargo, were contagious. She noticed that Mademoiselle Brun was speaking to an officer, but was more interested in the carriage, which, in accordance with an order sent by the captain, was at this moment rattling across the stones towards the steamer.

"This," said Mademoiselle Brun, "is Colonel Gilbert, whose letter you answered a few weeks ago."

"Ah, yes," said Denise, returning his bow, and looking at him with frank eyes. "Thank you very much, monsieur, but we are going to live at Perucca ourselves."

"By all means," laughed the colonel, "try it, mademoiselle; try it. It is an impossibility, I tell you frankly. And Corsica is not a country in which to attempt impossibilities. See here! I perceive you have your carriage ready, and the sailors are now carrying your baggage ashore. You are going to drive to Perucca. Good! Now, as you pass along the road, you will perceive on either side quite a number of small crosses, simply planted at the roadside—some of iron, some of wood, some with a name, some with initials. They are to be found all over Corsica, at the side of every road. Those are people, mademoiselle, who have attempted impossibilities in this country and have failed—at the very spot where the cross is planted. You understand? I speak as a soldier to a soldier's daughter."

He looked at her, and nodded slowly and gravely with compressed lips.

"Rest assured that we shall not attempt impossibilities," replied Denise, gaily. "We only ask to be left alone to feed our poultry and attend to our garden. I am told that the house and servants are as my father's cousin left them, and we are expected to-day."

"And you, colonel, shall be our protector," added Mademoiselle Brun, with one of her straight looks.

The colonel laughed, shrugged his shoulders, and accompanied them to the carriage which awaited them.

"If one only knew whether you approve or disapprove of these hair-brained proceedings," he took an opportunity of saying to Mademoiselle Brun, when Denise was out of earshot.

"If I only knew myself," she replied coldly.

They climbed into the high, old-fashioned carriage, and drove through the new Boulevard du Palais, upward to the hills above the town. And if they observed the small crosses on either side of the road, marking the spot where some poor wight had come to what is here called an accidental death, they took care to make no mention of it. For Denise persisted in seeing everything in that rose light which illumines the world when we are young. She had even a good word to say for the Perseverance, which vessel had assuredly need of such, and said that the captain was a good French sailor, despite his grimy face.

"This," she cried, "is better than your stuffy schoolroom!"

And she stood up in the carriage to inhale the breeze that hummed through the macquis from the cool mountain-tops. There is no air like that which comes as through a filter made of a hundred scented trees—a subtle mingling of their clean woody odours.

"Look!" she added, pointing down to the sea, which looked calm from this great height. "Look at that queer flat island there. That is Pianosa. And there is Elba. Elba! Cannot the magic of that word rouse you? But no, you have no Corsican blood in you; and you sit there with your uncompromising old face and your black bonnet a little bit on one side, if I may mention it"—and she proceeded to put Mademoiselle Brun's bonnet straight—"you, who are always in mourning for something—I don't know what," she added half reflectively, as she sat down again.

The road to St. Florent mounts in a semi-circle behind Bastia through orange-groves and vineyards, and the tiny private burial-grounds so dear to Corsican families of position. These, indeed, are a proud people, for they are too good to await the last day in the company of their humbler brethren, but must needs have a small garden and a hideous little mausoleum of their own, with a fine view and easy access to the highroad.

With many turns the great road climbs round the face of the mountain, and soon leaving Bastia behind, takes a southern trend, and suddenly commands from a height a matchless view of the Lake of Biguglia and the little hillside village where a Corsican parliament once sat, which was once, indeed, the capital of this war-torn island. For every village can boast of a battle, and the rocky earth has run with the blood of almost every European nation, as well as that of Turk and Moor. Beyond the lake, and stretching away into a blue haze where sea and land melt into one, lies the great salt marsh where the first Greek colony was located, where the ruins of Mariana remain to this day.

Soon the road mounts above the level of the semi-tropical vegetation, and passes along the face of bare and stony heights, where the pines are small and the macquis no higher than a man's head.

Denise, tired with so long a drive at a snail's pace, jumped from the carriage.

"I will walk up this hill," she cried to the driver, who had never turned in his seat or spoken a word to them.

"Then keep close to the carriage," he answered.

"Why?"

But he only indicated the macquis with his whip, and made no further answer. Mademoiselle Brun said nothing, but presently, when the driver paused to rest the horses, she descended from the carriage and walked with Denise.

It was nearly midday when they at last reached the summit of the pass. The heavy clouds, which had been long hanging over the mountains that border the great plain of Biguglia, had rolled northward before a hot and oppressive breeze, and the sun was now hidden. The carriage descended at a rapid trot, and once the man got down and silently examined his brakes. The road was a sort of cornice cut on the bare mountain side, and a stumble or the slipping of a brake-block would inevitably send the carriage rolling into the valley below.

Denise sat upright, and looked quickly, with eager movements of the head, from side to side. Soon they reached the region of the upper pines, which are small, and presently passed a piece of virgin forest—of those great pines which have no like in Europe.

"Look!" said Denise, gazing up at the great trees with a sort of gasp of excitement.

But mademoiselle had only eyes for the road in front. Before long they passed into the region of chestnuts, and soon saw the first habitation they had seen for two hours. For this is one of the most thinly peopled lands of Europe, and four great nations of the Continent have at one time or other done their best to exterminate this untameable race. Then a few more houses and a smaller road branching off to the left from the highway. The carriage swung round into this, which led straight to a wall built right across it. The driver pulled up, and, turning, brought the horses to a standstill at a door built in the solid wall. With his whip he indicated a bell-chain, rusty and worn, that swung in the breeze.

There was nobody to be seen. The clouds had closed down over the mountains. Even the tops of the great pines were hidden in a thin mist.

Denise got down and rang the bell. After a long pause the door was opened by a woman in black, with a black silk handkerchief over her head, who looked gravely at them.

"I am Denise Lange," said the girl.

"And I," said the woman, stepping back to admit them, "am the widow of Pietro Andrei, who was shot at Olmeta."

And Denise Lange entered her own door followed by Mademoiselle Brun.



CHAPTER X.

THUS FAR.

"There are some occasions on which a man must sell half his secret in order to conceal the rest."

"There is some one moving among the oleanders down by the river," said the count, coming quickly into the room where Lory de Vasselot was sitting, one morning some days after his unexpected arrival at the chateau.

The old man was cool enough, but he closed the window that led to the small terrace where he cultivated his carnations, with that haste which indicates a recognition of undeniable danger, coupled with no feeling of fear.

"I know every branch in the valley," he said, "every twig, every leaf, every shadow. There is some one there."

Lory rose, and laid aside the pen with which he was writing for an extended leave of absence. In four days these two had, as one of them had predicted, grown accustomed to each other. And the line between custom and necessity is a fine drawn one.

"Show me," he said, going towards the window.

"Ah!" murmured the count, jerking his head. "You will hardly perceive it unless you are a hunter—or the hunted."

Lory glanced at his father. Assuredly the sleeping mind was beginning to rouse itself.

"It is nothing but the stirring of a leaf here, the movement of a branch there, which are unusual and unnatural."

As he spoke, he opened the window with that slow caution which had become habitual to his every thought and action.

"There," he said, pointing with a steady hand; "to the left of that almond tree which is still in bloom. Watch those willows which have come there since the wall fell away, and the terrace slipped into the flooded river twenty-one years this spring. You will see the branches move. There—there! You see. It is a man, and he comes too slowly to have an honest purpose."

"I see," said Lory. "Is that land ours?"

The count gave an odd little laugh.

"You can see nothing from this window that is not ours," he answered. "As much as any other man's," he added, after a pause. For the conviction still holds good in some Corsican minds that the mountains are common property.

"He is coming slowly, but not very cautiously," said Lory. "Not like a man who thinks that he may be watched from here. He probably is taking no heed of these windows, for he thinks the place is deserted."

"It is more probable," replied the count, "that he is coming here to ascertain that fact. What the abbe has heard, another may hear, though he would not learn it from the abbe. If you want a secret kept, tell it to a priest, and of all priests, the Abbe Susini. Some one has heard that you are here in Corsica, and is creeping up to the castle to find out."

"And I will go and find him out. Two can play at that game in the bushes," said Lory, with a laugh.

"If you go, take a gun; one can never tell how a game may turn."

"Yes; I will take a gun if you wish it." And Lory went towards the door. "No," he said, pausing in answer to a gesture made by his father, "not that one. It is of too old a make."

And he went out of the room, leaving his father holding in his hand the gun with which he had shot Andrei Perucca thirty years before. He stood looking at the closed door with dim, reflective eyes. Then he looked at the gun, which he set slowly back in its corner.

"It seems," he said to himself, "that I am of too old a make also."

He went to the window, and, opening it cautiously, stood looking down into the valley. There he perceived that, though two may play at the same game, it is usually given to one to play it better than the other. For he who was climbing up the hill might be followed by a careful eye, by the chance displacement of a twig, the bending of a bough; while Lory, creeping down into the valley, remained quite invisible, even to his father, upon whose memory every shadow was imprinted.

"Aha!" laughed the old man, under his breath. "One sees that the boy is a Corsican. And," he added, after a pause, "one would almost say that the other is not."

In which the count's trained eye—trained as only is the vision of the hunted—was by no means deceived. For Lory, who was far down in the valley, had already caught sight of a braided sleeve, and, a moment later, recognized Colonel Gilbert. The colonel not only failed to perceive him, but was in nowise looking for him. He appeared to be entirely absorbed, first in the examination of the ground beneath his feet, and then in the contemplation of the rising land. In his hand he seemed to be carrying a note-book, and, so far as the watcher could see, consulted from time to time a compass.

"He is only engaged in his trade," said Lory to himself, with a laugh; and, going out into the open, he sat down on a rock with the gun across his knee and waited.

Thus it happened that Colonel Gilbert, working his way up through the bushes, note-book in hand, looked up and saw, within a few yards of him, the owner of the land upon which they stood, whom he had every reason to believe to be in Paris.

His ruddy face was of a deeper red as he slipped his note-book within his tunic and came forward, holding out his hand. But his smile was as ready and good-natured as ever.

"Well met!" he said. "You find me, count, taking a professional and business-like survey of the laud that you promised to sell me."

"You are welcome to take the survey," answered Lory, taking the outstretched, cordial hand, "but I must ask you to let me keep the land. I did not take your offer seriously."

"It was intended seriously, I assure you."

"Then it was my mistake," answered Lory, quite pleasantly.

He tapped himself vigorously on the chest, and made a gesture indicating that at a word from the colonel he was ready to lay violent hands upon himself for having been so foolish. The colonel laughed, and shrugged his shoulders as if the matter were but a small one. The pitiless Mediterranean, almost African, sun poured down on them, and one of those short spells of absolute calm, which are characteristic of these latitudes, made it unbearably hot. The colonel took off his cap, and, sitting down in quite a friendly way near de Vasselot on a rock, proceeded to mop his high forehead, pressing back the thin smooth hair which was touched here and there with grey.

"You have come here at the wrong time," he said. "The heats have begun. One longs for the cool breezes of Paris or of Normandy."

And he paused, giving Lory an opportunity of explaining why he had come at this time, which opportunity was promptly neglected.

"At all events, count," said the colonel, replacing his cap and lighting a cigarette, "I did not deceive you as to the nature of the land which I wished to buy. It is a desert, as you see. And yet I cannot help thinking that something might be made of this land."

He sat and gazed lazily in front of him. Presently, leaving his cigarette to smoulder, he began to buzz through his teeth, in the bucolic manner, an air of Offenbach. He was, in a word, entirely agricultural, and consequently slow of speech.

"Yes, count," he said, with conviction, after a long pause; "there is only one drawback to Corsica."

"Ah?"

"The Corsicans," said the colonel, gravely. "You do not know them as I do; for I suppose you have only been here a few days?"

De Vasselot's quick eyes glanced for a moment at the colonel's face, but no reply was made to the supposition. Then the colonel fell to his guileless Offenbach again. There is nothing so innocent as the meditative rendering of a well-known tune. A popular air is that which echoes in empty heads.

Colonel Gilbert glanced sideways at his companion. He had not thought that this was a silent man. Nature was singularly at fault in her mouldings if this slightly made, dark-eyed Frenchman was habitually taciturn. And the colonel was vaguely uneasy.

"My horse," he said, "is up at Olmeta. I took a walk round by the river. It is my business to answer innumerable questions from the Ministry of the Interior. Railway projects are still in the air, you understand. I must know my Corsica. Besides, as I tell you, I thought I was on my own land."

"I am sorry that I cannot hold to my joke, for it was nothing else, as you know."

"Yes, yes, of course," acquiesced the colonel. "And in the mean time, it is a great pleasure to see you here, as well as a surprise. I need hardly tell you that your presence here is quite unknown to your neighbours. We have little to talk about at this end of the island now that the Administration is centred more than ever at Ajaccio; and were it known in the district that you are at Vasselot, you may be sure I should have heard of it at the cafe or at the hotel where I dine."

"Yes. I came without drum or trumpet."

"You are wise."

The remark was made so significantly that Lory could not ignore it even if such a course had recommended itself to one of his quick and impulsive nature.

"What do you mean, colonel?"

Gilbert made a little gesture of the hand that held the half-burnt cigarette. He deprecated, it would appear, having been drawn to talk on so serious a topic.

"Well, I speak as one Frenchman to another, as one soldier to another. If the emperor does not die, he will declare war against Germany. There is the situation in a nutshell, is it not? And do you think the army can afford to lose one man at the present time, especially a man who has made good use of such small opportunities of distinction as the fates have offered him? And, so far as I have been able to follow the intricacies of the parochial politics, your life is not worth two sous in this country, my dear count. There, I have spoken. A word to the wise, is it not?"

He rose, and threw away his cigarette with a nod and a smile.

"And now I must be returning. You will allow me to pass up that small pathway that leads past the chateau. Some day I should, above all things, like to see the chateau. I am interested in old houses, I tell you frankly."

"I will walk part of the way with you," answered Lory, with a stiffness which was entirely due to a sense of self-reproach. For it was his instinct to be hospitable and open-handed and friendly. And Lory would have liked to ask the colonel then and there to come to the chateau.

"By the way," said the colonel, as they climbed the hill together, "I did not, of course, mean to suggest that you should sell me the old house which bears your name—only a piece of land, a few hectares on this south-west slope, that I may amuse myself with agriculture, as I told you. Perhaps some day you may reconsider your decision?"

He waited for a reply to this suggestion, or an invitation in response to the hint that he was interested in the old house. But neither came.

"I am much obliged to you for your warning as to the unpopularity of my name in this district," said Lory, rather laboriously changing the subject. "I had, of course, heard something of the same sort before; but I do not attach much importance to local tradition, do you?"

The colonel paused for a few minutes. He had the leisurely conversational manner of an old man.

"These people have undergone a change," he said at length, "since their final subjugation by ourselves—exactly a hundred years ago, by the way. They were a turbulent, fighting, obstinate people. Those qualities—good enough in times of war—go bad in times of peace. They are a lawless, idle, dishonest people now. Their grand fighting qualities have run to seed in municipal disagreements and electioneering squabbles. And, worst of all, we have grafted on them our French thrift, which has run to greed. There is not a man in the district who would shoot you, count, from any idea of the vendetta, but there are a hundred who would do it for a thousand-franc note, or in order to prevent you taking back the property which he has stolen from you. That is how it stands. And that is why Pietro Andrei came to grief at Olmeta."

"And Mattei Perucca?" asked Lory, thereby causing the colonel to trip suddenly over a stone.

"Oh, Perucca," he answered, "that was different. He died a more or less natural death. He was a very stout man, and on receiving a letter, gave way to such ungovernable rage that he fell in a fit. True, it was a threatening letter; but such are common enough in this country. It may have been a joke or may have had some comparatively harmless object. None could have foreseen such a result."

They were now near the chateau, and the colonel rather suddenly shook hands and went away.

"I am always to be found at Bastia, and am always at your service," he said, waving a farewell with his whip.

Lory found the door of the chateau ajar, and Jean watching behind it. His father, however, seemed to have forgotten upon what mission he had gone forth, and was sitting placidly in the little room, lighted by a skylight, where they always lived. The sight of Lory reminded him, however.

"Who was it?" he asked, without showing a very keen interest.

"It was a man called Gilbert," answered Lory, "whom I have met in Paris. An engineer. He is stationed at Bastia, and is connected with the railway scheme. A man I should like to like, and yet—He ought to be a good fellow. He has every qualification, and yet—"

Lory did not finish the sentence, but stood reflectively looking at his father.

"He has more than once offered to buy Vasselot," he said, watching for the effect.

"You must never sell Vasselot," replied the old man. He did not seem to conceive it possible that there should be any temptation to do so.

"I do not quite understand Colonel Gilbert," continued Lory. "He has also offered to buy Perucca; but there I think he has to deal with a clever woman."



CHAPTER XI.

BY SURPRISE.

"C'est ce qu'on ne dit pas qui explique ce qu'on dit."

From the Rue du Cherche-Midi in Paris to the Casa Perucca in Corsica is as complete a change as even the heart of woman may desire. For the Rue du Cherche-Midi is probably the noisiest corner of that noisy Paris that lies south of the Seine; and the Casa Perucca is one of the few quiet corners of Europe where the madding crowd is non-existent, and that crowning effort of philanthropic folly, the statute holiday, has yet to penetrate.

"Yes," said Mademoiselle Brun, one morning, after she and Denise had passed two months in what she was pleased to term exile—"yes; it is peaceful. Give me war," she added grimly, after a pause.

They were standing on the terrace that looked down over the great valley of Vasselot. There was not a house in sight except the crumbling chateau. The month was June, and the river, which could be heard in winter, was now little more than a trickling stream. A faint breeze stirred the young leaves of the copper-beech, which is a silent tree by nature, and did not so much as whisper now. There are few birds in Corsica, for the natives are great sportsmen, and will shoot, sitting, anything from a man to a sparrow in season and out.

"Listen," said Mademoiselle Brun, holding up one steady, yellow finger; but the silence was such as will make itself felt. "And the neighbours do not call much," added mademoiselle, in completion of her own thoughts.

Denise laughed. She had been up early, for they were almost alone in the Casa Perucca now. The servants who had obeyed Mattei Perucca in fear and trembling, had refused to obey Denise, who, with much spirit, had dismissed them one and all. An old man remained, who was generally considered to be half-witted; and Maria Andrei, the widow of Pietro, who was shot at Olmeta. Denise superintended the small farm.

"That cheery Maria," said Mademoiselle Brun, "she is our only resource, and reminds me of a cheap funeral."

"There is the colonel," said Denise. "You forget him."

"Yes; there is the colonel, who is so kind to us."

And Mademoiselle Brun slowly contemplated the whole landscape, taking in Denise, as it were, in passing.

"And there is our little friend," she added, "down in the valley there who does not call."

"Why do you call him little?" asked Denise, looking down at the Chateau de Vasselot. "He is not little."

"He is not so large as the colonel," explained mademoiselle.

"I wonder why he does not call?" said Denise, presently, looking down into the valley, as if she could perhaps see the explanation there.

"It has something to do with the social geography of the district," said mademoiselle, "which we do not understand. The Cheap Funeral alone knows it. Half of the country she colours red, the other half black. Theoretically, we hate a number of persons who reciprocate the feeling heartily. Practically, we do not know of their existence. I imagine the Count de Vasselot hates us on the same principle."

"But we are not going to be dictated to by a number of ignorant peasants," cried Denise, angrily.

"I rather fancy we are."

Denise was standing by the low wall, with her head thrown back. She was naturally energetic, and had the carriage that usually goes with that quality.

"Are you sure he is there?" she asked, still looking down at the chateau.

"No, I am not. I have only Maria's word for it."

"Then I am going to the village of Olmeta to find out," said Denise.

And mademoiselle followed her to the house without comment. Indeed, she seemed willing enough to do that which they had been warned not to do.

On the road that skirts the hill and turns amid groves of chestnut trees, they met two men, loitering along with no business in hand, who scowled at them and made no salutation.

"They may scowl beneath their great hats," said Denise; "I am not afraid of them." And she walked on with her chin well up.

Below them, on the left, the terraces of vine and olive were weed-grown and neglected; for Denise had found no one to work on her land, and the soil here is damp and warm, favouring a rapid growth.

Colonel Gilbert had been unable to help them in this matter. His official position necessarily prevented his taking an active part in any local differences. There were Luccans, he said, to be hired at Bastia, hard-working men and skilled vine-dressers, but they would not come to a commune where such active hostility existed, and to induce them to do so would inevitably lead to bloodshed.

The Abbe Susini had called, and told a similar tale in more guarded language. Finding the ladies good Catholics, he pleaded for and abused his poor in one breath, and then returned half the money that Denise gave him.

"As likely as not you will be given credit for the whole in heaven, mademoiselle, but I will only take part of it," he said.

"A masterful man," commented Mademoiselle Brun, when he was gone.

But the abbe had suggested no solution to Denise's difficulties. The estate seemed to be drifting naturally into the hands of the only man who wanted it, and, after all, had offered a good price for it.

"I will find out from the Abbe Susini or the mayor whether the Count de Vasselot is really here," Denise said, as they approached the village. "And if he is, we will go and see him. We cannot go on like this. He says do not sell, and then he does not come near us. He must give his reasons. Why should I take his advice?"

"Why, indeed?" said Mademoiselle Brun, to whom the question was not quite a new one.

She knew that though Denise would rebel against de Vasselot's advice, she would continue to follow it.

"It seems to be luncheon-time," said Denise, when they reached the village. "The place is deserted. It must be their dejeuner."

"It may be," responded mademoiselle, with her manlike curtness of speech.

They went into the church, which was empty, and stayed but a few minutes there, for Mademoiselle Brun was as short in her speech with God as with men. When they came out to the market-place, that also was deserted, which was singular, because the villagers in Corsica spend nearly the whole day on the market-place, talking politics and whispering a hundred intrigues of parochial policy; for here a municipal councillor is a great man, and usually a great scoundrel, selling his favour and his vote, trafficking for power, and misappropriating the public funds. Not only was the market-place empty, but some of the house-doors were closed. The door of a small shop was even shut from within as they approached, and surreptitiously barred. Mademoiselle Brun noticed it, and Denise did not pretend to ignore it.

"One would say that we had an infectious complaint," she said, with a short laugh.

They went to the house of the Abbe Susini. Even this door was shut.

"The abbe is out," said the old woman, who came in answer to their summons, and she closed the door again with more speed than politeness.

Denise did not need to ask which was the mayor's house, for a board, with the word "Mairie" painted upon it (appropriately enough a movable board), was affixed to a house nearly opposite to the church. As they walked towards it, a stone, thrown from the far corner of the Place, under the trees, narrowly missed Denise, and rolled at her feet. Mademoiselle Brun walked on, but Denise swung round on her heel. There was no one to be seen, so she had to follow Mademoiselle Brun, after all, in silence. She was rather pale, but it was anger that lighted her eyes, and not fear.

Almost immediately a volley of stones followed, and a laugh rang out from beneath the trees. And, strange to say, it was the laugh that at last frightened Denise, and not the stones; for it was a cruel laugh—the laugh of a brutal fool, such as one may still hear in a few European countries when boys are torturing dumb animals.

"Let us hurry," said Denise, hastily. "Let us get to the Mairie."

"Where we shall find the biggest scoundrel of them all, no doubt," added mademoiselle, who was alert and cool.

But before they reached the Mairie the stones had ceased, and they both turned at the sound of a horse's feet. It was Colonel Gilbert riding hastily into the Place. He saw the stones lying there and the two women standing alone in the sunlight. He looked towards the trees, and then round at the closed houses. With a shrug of the shoulders, he rode towards Denise and dismounted.

"Mademoiselle", he said, "they have been frightening you."

"Yes", she answered. "They are not men, but brutes."

The colonel, who was always gentle in manner, made a deprecatory gesture with the great riding-whip that he invariably carried.

"You must remember", he said, "that they are but half civilized. You know their history—they have been conquered by all the greedy nations in succession, and they have never known peace from the time that history began until a hundred years ago. They are barbarians, mademoiselle, and barbarians always distrust a new-comer."

"But why do they hate me?"

"Because they do not know you, mademoiselle," replied the colonel, with perhaps a second meaning in his blue eyes.

And, after a pause, he explained further.

"Because they do not understand you. They belong to one of the strongest clans in Corsica, and it is the ambition of every one to belong to a strong clan. But the Peruccas are in danger of falling into dissension and disorder, for they have no head. You are the head, mademoiselle. And the work they expect of you is not work for such hands as yours."

And again Colonel Gilbert looked at Denise slowly and thoughtfully. She did not perceive the glance, for she was standing with her head half turned towards the trees.

"Ah!" he said, noting the direction of her glance, "they will throw no more stones, mademoiselle. You need have no anxiety. They fear a uniform as much as they hate it."

"And if you had not come at that moment?"

"Ah!" said the colonel, gravely; and that was all. "At any rate, I am glad I came," he added, in a lighter tone, after a pause. "You were going to the Mairie, mesdemoiselles, when I arrived. Take my advice, and do not go there. Go to the abbe if you like—as a man, not as a priest—and come to me whenever you desire a service, but to no one else in Corsica."

Denise turned as if she were going to make an exception to this sweeping restriction, but she checked herself and said nothing. And all the while Mademoiselle Brun stood by in silence, a little, patient, bent woman, with compressed lips, and those steady hazel eyes that see so much and betray so little.

"The abbe is not at home," continued the colonel. "I saw him many miles from here not long ago; and although he is quick on his legs—none quicker—He cannot be here yet. If you are going towards the Casa Perucca, you will perhaps allow me to accompany you".

He led the way as he spoke, leading loosely by the bridle the horse which followed him, and nuzzled thoughtfully at his shoulder. The colonel was, it appeared, one whose gentle ways endeared him to animals.

It was glaringly hot, and when they reached the Casa Perucca, Denise asked the colonel to come in and rest. It was, moreover, luncheon-time, and in a thinly populated country the great distances between neighbours are conducive to an easier hospitality than that which exists in closer quarters. The colonel naturally stayed to luncheon.

He was kind and affable, and had a hundred little scraps of gossip such as exiles love. He made no mention of his offer to buy Perucca, remembered only the fact that he was a gentleman accepting frankly a lady's frank hospitality, and if the conversation turned to local matters, he gracefully guided it elsewhere.

Immediately after luncheon he rose from the table, refusing even to wait for coffee.

"I have my duties," he explained. "The War Office is, for reasons known to itself, moving troops, and I have gradually crept up the ladder at Bastia, till I am nearly at the top there."

Denise went with him to the stable to see that his horse had been cared for.

"They have only left me the decrepit and the half-witted," she said, "but I am not beaten yet."

Colonel Gilbert fetched the horse himself and tightened the girths. They walked together towards the great gate of solid wood which fitted into the high wall so closely that none could peep through so much as a crack. At the door the colonel lingered, leaning against his great horse and stroking its shoulder thoughtfully with a gloved finger.

"Mademoiselle," he said at length.

"Yes," answered Denise, looking at him so honestly in the face that he had to turn away.

"I want to ask you," he said slowly, "to marry me."

Denise looked at him in utter astonishment, her face suddenly red, her eyes half afraid.

"I do not understand you," she said.

"And yet it is simple enough," answered the colonel, who himself was embarrassed and ill at ease. "I ask you to marry me. You think I am too old—" He paused, seeking his words. "I am not forty yet, and, at all events, I am not making the mistake usually made by very young men. I do not imagine that I love you—I know it."

They stood for a minute in silence; then the colonel spoke again.

"Of what are you thinking, mademoiselle?"

"That it is hard to lose the only friend we have in Corsica."

"You need not do that," replied the colonel. "I do not even ask you to answer now."

"Oh, I can answer at once."

Colonel Gilbert bit his lip, and looked at the ground in silence.

"Then I am too old?" he said at length.

"I do not know whether it is that or not," answered Denise; and neither spoke while the colonel mounted and rode slowly away. Denise closed the door quite softly behind him.



CHAPTER XII.

A SUMMONS.

"One stern tyrannic thought that made All other thoughts its slave."

All round the Mediterranean Sea there dwell people who understand the art of doing nothing. They do it unblushingly, peaceably, and of a set purpose. Moreover, their forefathers must have been addicted to a similar philosophy; for there is no Mediterranean town or village without its promenade or lounging-place, where the trees have grown quite large, and the shade is quite deep, and the wooden or stone seats are shiny with use. Here those whom the French call "worth-nothings" congregate peacefully and happily, to look at the sea and contemplate life from that reflective and calm standpoint which is only to be enjoyed by the man who has nothing to lose. To begin at Valentia, one will find these human weeds almost Oriental in their apathy. Farther north, at Barcelona, they are given to fitful lapses into activity before the heat of the day. At Marseilles they are almost energetic, and are even known to take the trouble of asking the passer for alms. But eastward, beyond Toulon, they understand their business better, and do not even trouble to talk among themselves. The French worth-nothing is, in a word, worth less than any of his brothers—much less than the Italian, who is quite easily roused to a display of temper and a rusty knife—and more nearly approaches the supreme calm of the Moor, who, across the Mediterranean, will sit all day and stare at nothing with any man in the world. And between these dreamy coasts there lie half a dozen islands which, strange to say, are islands of unrest. In Majorca every man works from morn till eve. In Minorca they do the same, and quarrel after nightfall. In Iviza they quarrel all day. In Corsica they do nothing, restlessly; while Sardinia, as all the world knows, is a hotbed of active discontent.

At Ajaccio there are half a dozen idlers on the Place Bonaparte, who sit under the trees against the wall; but they never sit there long, and do not know their business. At St. Florent, in the north of the island, which has a western aspect—the best for idling—there are but two real, unadulterated knights of industry, who sit on the low wall of that which is called the New Quay, and conscientiously do nothing from morning till night.

"Of course I know him," one was saying to the other. "Do I not remember his father, and are not all the de Vasselots cut with the same knife? I tell you there was a moon, and I saw him get off his horse, just here at the very door of Rutali's stable, and unstrap his sack, which he carried himself, and set off towards Olmeta."

The speaker lapsed into silence, and Colonel Gilbert, who had lunched, and was now sitting at the open window of the little inn, which has neither sign nor license, leant farther forward. For the word "Olmeta" never failed to bring a light of energy and enterprise into his quiet eyes.

The inn has its entrance in the main street of St. Florent, and only the back windows look out upon the quay and across the bay. It was at one of these windows that Colonel Gilbert was enjoying a cigarette and a cup of coffee, and the loafers on the quay were unaware of his presence there. And for the sixth time at least, the story of Lory de Vasselot's arrival at St. Florent and departure for Olmeta was told and patiently heard. Has not one of the great students of human nature said that the canaille of all nations are much alike? And the dull or idle of intellect assuredly resemble each other in the patience with which they will listen to or tell the same story over and over again.

The colonel heard the tale, listlessly gazing across the bay with dreamy eyes, and only gave the talker his full attention when more ancient history was touched upon.

"Yes," said the idler; "and I remember his father when he was just at that age—as like this one as one sheep is like another. Nor have I forgotten the story which few remember now."

He pressed down the tobacco into his wooden pipe—for they are pipe-smokers in a cigarette latitude—and waited cunningly for curiosity to grow. His companion showed no sign, though the colonel set his empty coffee-cup noiselessly aside and leant his elbow on the window-sill.

The speaker jerked his thumb in the direction of Olmeta over his left shoulder far up on the mountainside.

"That story was buried with Perucca," he said, after a long pause. "Perhaps the Abbe Susini knows it. Who can tell what a priest knows? There were two Peruccas once—fine, big men—and neither married. The other—Andrei Perucca—who has been in hell these thirty years, made sheep's eyes, they told me, at de Vasselot's young wife. She was French, and willing enough, no doubt. She was dull, down there in that great chateau; and when a woman is dull she must either go to church or to the devil. She cannot content herself with tobacco or the drink, like a man. De Vasselot heard of it. He was a quiet man, and he waited. One day he began to carry a gun, like you and me—a bad example, eh? Then Andrei Perucca was seen to carry a gun also. And, of course, in time they met—up there on the road from Pruneta to Murato. The clouds were down, and the gregale was blowing cold and showery. It is when the gregale blows that the clouds seem to whisper as they crowd through the narrow places up among the peaks, and there was no other sound while these two men crept round each other among the rocks, like two cats upon a roof. De Vasselot was quicker and smaller, and as agile as a goat, and Andrei Perucca lost him altogether. He was a fool. He went to look for him. As if any one in his senses would go to look for a Corsican in the rocks! That is how the gendarmes get killed. At length Andrei Perucca raised his head over a big stone, and looked right into the muzzle of de Vasselot's gun. The next minute there was no head upon Perucca's shoulders."

The narrator paused, and relighted his pipe with a foul-smelling sulphur match.

"Yes," he said reflectively; "they are fine men, the de Vasselots."

He tapped himself on the chest with the stem of his pipe, and made a gesture towards the mountains and the sky, as if calling upon the gods to hear him.

"I am all for the de Vasselots—I," he said.

Colonel Gilbert leant out of the window, and quietly took stock of this valuable adherent.

"At that time," continued the speaker, "we had at Bastia a young prefect who took himself seriously. He was going to reform the world. They decided to arrest the Count de Vasselot, though they had not a scrap of evidence, and the clan was strong in those days, stronger than the Peruccas are to-day. But they never caught him. They disappeared bag and baggage—went to Paris, I understand; and they say the count died there, or was perhaps killed by the Peruccas, who grew strong under Mattei, so that in a few years it would have been impossible for a de Vasselot to show his face in this country. Then Mattei Perucca died, and was hardly in his grave before this man came. I tell you, I saw him myself, a de Vasselot, with his father's quick way of turning his head, of sitting in the saddle lightly like a Spaniard or a Corsican. That was in the spring, and it is now July—three months ago. And he has never been seen or heard of since. But he is here, I tell you; he is here in the island. As likely as not he is in the old chateau down there in the valley. No honest man has set his foot across the threshold since the de Vasselots left it thirty years ago—only Jean is there, who has the evil eye. But there are plenty of Perucca's people up at Olmeta who would risk Jean's eye, and break down the doors of the chateau at a word from the Casa Perucca. But the girl there who is the head of the clan will not say the word. She does not understand that she is powerful if she would only go to work in the right way, and help her people. Instead of that, she quarrels with them over such small matters as the right of grazing or of cutting wood. She will make the place too hot for her—" He broke off suddenly. "What is that?" he said, turning on the wall, which was polished smooth by constant friction.

He turned to the north and listened, looking in the direction of Cap Corse, from whence the Bastia road comes winding down the mountain slopes.

"I hear nothing," said his companion.

"Then you are deaf. It is the diligence half an hour before its time, and the driver of it is shouting as he comes—shouting to the people on the road. It seems that there is news—"

But Colonel Gilbert heard no more, for he had seized his sword, and was already halfway down the stone stairs. It appeared that he expected news, and when the diligence drew up in the narrow street, he was there awaiting it, amid a buzzing crowd, which had inexplicably assembled in the twinkling of an eye. Yes; there was assuredly news, for the diligence came in at a gallop though there was no one on it but the driver. He shouted incoherently, and waved his whip above his head. Then, quite suddenly, perceiving Colonel Gilbert, he snapped his lips together, threw aside the reins, and leapt to the ground.

"Mon colonel," he said, "a word with you."

And they went apart into a doorway. Three words sufficed to tell all that the diligence driver knew, and a minute later the colonel hurried towards the stable of the inn, where his horse stood ready. He rode away at a sharp trot, not towards Bastia, but down the valley of Vasselot. Although it was evident that he was pressed for time, the colonel did not hurry his horse, but rather relieved it when he could by dismounting, at every sharp ascent, and riding where possible in the deep shade of the chestnut trees. He turned aside from the main road that climbs laboriously to Oletta and Olmeta, and followed the river-path. In order to gain time he presently left the path, and made a short cut across the open land, glancing up at the Casa Perucca as he did so. For he was trespassing.

He was riding leisurely enough when his horse stumbled, and, in recovering itself, clumsily kicked a great stone with such force that he shattered it to a hundred pieces, and then stood on three legs, awkwardly swinging his hoof in a way that horses have when the bone has been jarred. In a moment the colonel dismounted, and felt the injured leg carefully.

"My friend," he said kindly, "you are a fool. What are you doing? Name of a dog"—he paused, and collecting the pieces of broken quartz, threw them away into the brush—"name of a dog, what are you doing?"

With an odd laugh Colonel Gilbert climbed into the saddle again, and although he looked carefully up at the Casa Perucca, he failed to see Mademoiselle Brun's grey face amid the grey shadows of an olive tree. The horse limped at first, but presently forgot his grievance against the big stone that had lain in his path. The colonel laughed to himself in a singular way more than once at the seemingly trivial accident, and on regaining the path, turned in his saddle to look again at the spot where it had occurred.

On nearing the chateau he urged his horse to a better pace, and reached the great door at a sharp trot. He rang the bell without dismounting, and leisurely quitted the saddle. But the summons was not immediately answered. He jerked at the chain again, and rattled on the door with the handle of his riding whip. At length the bolts were withdrawn, and the heavy door opened sufficiently to admit a glance of that evil eye which the peasants did not care to face.

Before speaking the colonel made a step forward, so that his foot must necessarily prevent the closing of the door.

"The Count de Vasselot," said he.

"Take away your foot," replied Jean.

The colonel noted with a good-natured surprise the position of his stout riding-boot, and withdrew it.

"The Count de Vasselot," he repeated. "You need not trouble, my friend, to tell any lies or to look at me with your evil eye. I know the count is here, for I saw him in Paris just before he came, and I spoke to him at this very door a few weeks ago. He knows me, and I think you know me too, my friend. Tell your master I have news from France. He will see me."

Jean unceremoniously closed the door, and the colonel, who was moving away towards his horse, turned sharply on his heel when he heard the bolts being surreptitiously pushed back again.

"Ah!" he said, and he stood outside the door with his hand at his moustache, reflectively following Jean's movements, "they are singularly careful to keep me out, these people."

He had not long to wait, however, for presently Lory came, stepping quickly over the high threshold and closing the door behind him. But Gilbert was taller than de Vasselot, and could see over his head. He looked right through the house into the little garden on the terrace, and saw someone there who was not Jean. And the light of surprise was still in his eyes as he shook hands with Lory de Vasselot.

"You have news for me?" inquired de Vasselot.

"News for every Frenchman."

"Ah!"

"Yes. The emperor has declared war against Germany."

"War!" echoed Lory, with a sudden laugh.

"Yes; and your regiment is the first on the list."

"I know, I know!" cried de Vasselot, his eyes alight with excitement. "But this is good news that you tell me. How can I thank you for coming? I must get home—I mean to France—at once. But this is great news!" He seized the colonel's hand and shook it. "Great news, mon colonel—great news!"

"Good news for you, for you are going. But I shall be left behind as usual. Yes; it is good news for you."

"And for France," cried Lory, with both hands outspread, as if to indicate the glory that was awaiting them.

"For France," said the colonel, gravely, "it cannot fail to be bad. But we must not think of that now."

"We shall never think of it," answered Lory. "This is Monday; there is a boat for Marseilles to-night. I leave Bastia to-night, colonel."

"And I must get back there," said the colonel, holding out his hand.

He rode thoughtfully back by the shortest route through the Lancone Defile, and, as he approached Bastia, from the heights behind the town he saw the steamer that would convey Lory to France coming northward from Bonifacio.

"Yes," he said; "he will leave Bastia to-night; and assuredly the good God, or the devil, helps me at every turn of this affair."



CHAPTER XIII.

WAR.

"Since all that I can ever do for thee Is to do nothing, may'st thou never see, Never divine, the all that nothing costeth me!"

It is for kings to declare war, for nations to fight and pay. Napoleon III declared war against Russia, and France fought side by side with England in the Crimea, not because the gayest and most tragic of nations had aught to gain, but to ensure an upstart emperor a place among the monarchs of Europe. And that strange alliance was merely one move in a long game played by a consummate intriguer—a game which began disastrously at Boulogne and ended disastrously at Sedan, and yet was the most daring and brilliant feat of European statesmanship that has been carried out since the adventurer's great uncle went to St. Helena.

But no one knows why in July, 1870, Napoleon III declared war against Germany. The secret of the greatest war of modern times lies buried in the Imperial mausoleum at Frognal.

There is a sort of surprise which is caused by the sudden arrival of the long expected, and Germany experienced it in that hot midsummer, for there seemed to be no reason why war should break out at the moment. Shortly before, the Spanish Government had offered the crown to the hereditary Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern, and France, ever ready to see a grievance, found herself suited. But the hereditary prince declined that throne, and the incident seemed about to close. Then quite suddenly France made a demand, with reference to any possible recurrence of the same question, which Germany could not be expected to grant. It was an odd demand to make, and in a flash of thought the great German chancellor saw that this meant war. Perhaps he had been waiting for it. At all events, he was prepared for it, as were the silent soldier, von Roon, and the gentle tactician, von Moltke. These gentlemen were away for a holiday, but they returned, and, as history tells, had merely to fill in a few dates on already prepared documents.

If France was not ready she thought herself so, and was at all events willing. Nay, she was so eager that she shouted when she should have held her tongue. And who shall say what the schemer of the Tuileries thought of it all behind that pleasant smile, those dull and sphinx-like eyes? He had always believed in his star, had always known that he was destined to be great; and now perhaps he knew that his star was waning—that the greatness was past. He made his preparations quietly. He was never a flustered man, this nephew of the greatest genius the world has seen. Did he not sit three months later in front of a cottage at Donchery and impassively smoke cigarette after cigarette while waiting for Otto von Bismarck? He was a fatalist.

"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on."

And it must be remembered to his credit that he asked no man's pity—a request as foolish to make for a fallen emperor as for the ordinary man who has, for instance, married in haste, and is given the leisure of a whole lifetime in which to repent. For the human heart is incapable of bestowing unadulterated pity: there must be some contempt in it. If the fall of Napoleon III was great, let it be remembered that few place themselves by their own exertions in a position to fall at all.

The declaration of war was, on the whole, acclaimed in France; for Frenchmen are, above all men, soldiers. Does not the whole world use French terms in the technicalities of warfare? The majority received the news as Lory de Vasselot received it. For a time he could only think that this was a great and glorious moment in his life. He hurried in to tell his father, but the count failed to rise to the occasion.

"War!" he said. "Yes; there have been many in my time. They have not affected me—or my carnations."

"And I go to it to-night," announced Lory, watching his father with eyes suddenly grave and anxious.

"Ah!" said the count, and made no farther comment.

Then, without pausing to consider his own motives, Lory hurried up to the Casa Perucca to tell the ladies there his great news. He must, it seemed, tell somebody, and he knew no one else within reach, except perhaps the Abbe Susini, who did not pretend to be a Frenchman.

"Is it peace?" asked Mademoiselle Brun, who, having seen him climbing the steep slope in the glaring sunshine, was waiting for him by the open side-door when he arrived there.

He took her withered hand, and bowed over it as gallantly as if it had been soft and young.

"What do you mean?" he asked, looking at her curiously.

"Well, it seems that the Casa Perucca and the Chateau de Vasselot are not on visiting terms. We only call on each other with a gun."

"It is odd that you should have asked me that," said Lory, "for it is not peace, but war."

And as he looked at her, her face hardened, her steady eyes wavered for once.

"Ah!" she said, her hands dropping sharply against her dingy black dress in a gesture of despair. "Again!"

"Yes, mademoiselle," answered Lory, gently; for he had a quick intuition, and knew at a glance that war must have hurt this woman at one time of her life.

She stood for a moment tapping the ground with her foot, looking reflectively across the valley.

"Assuredly," she said, "Frenchwomen must be the bravest women in the world, or else there would never be a light heart in the whole country. Come, let us go in and tell Denise. It is Germany, I suppose?"

"Yes, mademoiselle. They have long wanted it, and we are obliging them at last. You look grave. It is not bad news I bring you, but good."

"Women like soldiers, but they hate war," said mademoiselle, and walked on slowly in silence.

After a pause, she turned and looked at him as if she were going to ask him a question, but checked herself.

"I almost did a foolish thing," she explained, seeing his glance of surprise. "I was going to ask you if you were going?"

"Ah, yes, I am going," he answered, with a laugh and a keen glance of excitement. "War is a necessary evil, mademoiselle, and assists promotion. Why should you hate it?"

"Because we cannot interfere in it," replied Mademoiselle Brun, with a snap of the lips. "We shall find Denise in the garden to the north of the house, picking green beans, Monsieur le Comte," continued Mademoiselle Brun, with a glance in his direction.

"Then I shall have time to help with the beans before I go to the war," answered Lory; and they walked on in silence.

The garden was but half cultivated—a luxuriant thicket of fruit and weed, of trailing vine and wild clematis. The air of it was heavy with a hundred scents, and, in the shade, was cool, and of a mossy odour rarely found in Southern seas.

They did not see Denise at first, and then suddenly she emerged at the other end of the weed-grown path where they stood. Lory hurried forward, hat in hand, and perceived that Denise made a movement, as if to go back into the shadow, which was immediately restrained.

Mademoiselle Brun did not follow Lory, but turned back towards the house.

"If they must quarrel," she said to herself, "they may do it without my assistance."

And Denise seemed, indeed, ready to fall out with her neighbour, for she came towards him with heightened colour and a flash of annoyance in her eyes.

"I am sorry they put you to the trouble of coming out here," she said.

"Why, mademoiselle? Because I find you picking green beans?"

"No; not that. But one has one's pride. This is my garden. I keep it! Look at it!" And she waved her hand with a gesture of contempt.

De Vasselot looked gravely round him. Then, after a pause, he made a movement of the deepest despair.

"Yes, mademoiselle," he said, with a great sigh, "it is a wilderness."

"And now you are laughing at me."

"I, mademoiselle?" And he faced her tragic eyes.

"You think I am a woman."

De Vasselot spread out his hands in deprecation, as if, this time, she had hit the mark.

"Yes," he said slowly.

"I mean you think we are only capable of wearing pretty clothes and listening to pretty speeches, and that anything else is beyond our grasp altogether."

"Nothing in the world, mademoiselle, is beyond your grasp, except"—he paused, and looked round him—"except a spade, perhaps, and that is what this garden wants."

They were very grave about it, and sat down on a rough seat built by Mattei Perucca, who had come there in the hot weather.

"Then what is to be done?" said Denise, simply.

For the French—the most intellectually subtle people of the world—have a certain odd simplicity which seems to have survived all the changes and chances of monarchy, republic, and empire.

"I do not quite know. Have you not a man?"

"I have nobody, except a decrepit old man, who is half an imbecile," said Denise, with a short laugh. "I get my provisions surreptitiously by the hand of Madame Andrei. No one else comes near the Casa. We are in a state of siege. I dare not go into Olmeta; but I am holding on because you advised me not to sell."

"I, mademoiselle?"

"Yes; in Paris. Have you forgotten?"

"No," answered Lory, slowly—"no; I have not forgotten. But no one takes my advice—indeed, no one asks it—except about a horse. They think I know about a horse." And Lory smiled to himself at the thought of his proud position.

"But you surely meant what you said?" asked Denise.

"Oh yes. But you honour me too much by taking my opinion thus seriously without question, mademoiselle."

Denise was looking at him with her clear, searching eyes, rather veiled by a suggestion of disappointment.