"I thought—I thought you seemed so decided, so sure of your own opinion," she said doubtfully.

De Vasselot was silent for a moment, then he turned to her quickly, impulsively, confidentially.

"Listen," he said. "I will tell you the truth. I said 'Don't sell.' I say 'Don't sell' still. And I have not a shred of reason for doing so. There!"

Denise was not a person who was easily led. She laughed at the stern, strong Mademoiselle Brun to her face, and treated her opinion with a gay contempt. She had never yet been led.

"No," she said, and seemed ready to dispense with reasons. "You will not sell, yourself?" she said, after a pause.

"No; I cannot sell," he said quickly; and she remembered his answer long afterwards.

After a pause he explained farther.

"I tell you frankly," he said earnestly, for he was always either very earnest or very gay—"I tell you frankly, when we both received an offer to buy, I thought there must be some reason why the places are worth buying, but I have found none."

He paused, and, looking round, remembered that this also was his, and did not belong to Denise at all, who claimed it, and held it with such a high hand.

"As Corsica at present stands, Perucca and Vasselot are valueless, mademoiselle, I claim the honour of being in the same boat with you. And if the empire falls—bonjour la paix!"

And he sketched a grand upheaval with a wave of his two hands in the air.

"But why should the empire fall?" asked Denise, sharply.

"Ah, but I have the head of a sparrow!" cried Lory, and he smote himself grievously on the forehead. "I forgot to tell you the very thing that I came to tell you. Which is odd, for until I came into this garden I could think of nothing else. I was ready to shout it to the trees. War has been declared, mademoiselle."

"War!" said Denise; and she drew in one whistling breath through her teeth, as one may who has been burnt by contact with heated metal, and sat looking straight in front of her. "When do you go, Monsieur le Comte?" she asked, in a steady voice, after a moment.

"To-night."

He rose, and stood before her, looking at the tangled garden with a frown.

"Ah!" he said, with a sudden laugh, "if the emperor had only consulted me, he would not have done it just yet. I want to go, of course, for I am a soldier. But I do not want to go now. I should have liked to see things more settled, here in Olmeta. If the empire falls, mademoiselle, you must return to France; remember that. I should have liked to have offered you my poor assistance; but I cannot—I must go. There are others, however. There is Mademoiselle Brun, with a man's heart in that little body. And there is the Abbe Susini. Yes; you can trust him as you can trust a little English fighting terrier. Tell him——No; I will tell him. He is a Vasselot, mademoiselle, but I shall make him a Perucca."

He held out his hand gaily to say good-bye.

"And—stay! Will you write to me if you want me, mademoiselle? I may be able to get to you."

Denise did not answer for a moment. Then she looked him straight in the eyes, as was her wont with men and women alike.

"Yes," she said.

A few minutes later, Mademoiselle Brun came into the garden. She looked round but saw no one. Approaching the spot where she had left Denise, she found the basket with a few beans in it, and Denise's gloves lying there. She knew that Lory had gone, but still she could see Denise nowhere. There were a hundred places in the garden where any who did not wish to be discovered could find concealment.

Mademoiselle Brun took up the basket and continued to pick the French beans.

"My poor child! my poor child!" she muttered twice, with a hard face.



CHAPTER XIV.

GOSSIP.

"Cupid is a casuist, A mystic, and a cabalist. Can your lurking thought surprise, And interpret your device?"

That which has been taken by the sword must be held by the sword. In Corsica the blade is sheathed, but it has never yet been laid aside. The quick events of July thrust this sheathed weapon into the hand of Colonel Gilbert, who, as he himself had predicted, was left behind in the general exodus.

"If you are placed in command at Bastia, how many, or how few men will suffice?" asked the civil authority, who was laid on the shelf by the outbreak of war.

And Colonel Gilbert named what appeared to be an absurd minimum.

"We must think of every event; things may go badly, the fortune of war may turn against us."

"Still I can do it," answered the colonel.

"The empire may fall, and then Corsica will blaze up like tow."

"Still I can do it," repeated the colonel.

It is the natural instinct of man to strike while his blood is up, and the national spirit on either side of the Rhine was all for immediate action. The leaders themselves were anxious to begin, so that they might finish before the winter. So the preparations were pushed forward in Germany with a methodical haste, a sane and deliberate foresight. In France it was more a question of sentiment—the invincibility of French arms, the heroism of French soldiers, the Napoleonic legend. But while these abstract aids to warfare may make a good individual soldier of that untidy little man in the red trousers, who has, in his time, overrun all Europe, it will not move great armies or organize a successful campaign. For the French soldier must have some one to fight for—some one towering man in whom he trusts, who can turn to good account some of the best fighting material the human race has yet produced. And Napoleon III was not such a man.

It is almost certain that he counted on receiving assistance from Austria or Italy, and when this was withheld, the disease-stricken, suffering man must assuredly have realized that his star was sinking. He had made the mistake of putting off this great war too long. He should have fought it years earlier, before the Prussians had made sure of those steady, grumbling Bavarians, who bore the brunt of all the fighting, before his own hand was faltering at the helm, and the face of God was turned away from the Napoleonic dynasty.

The emperor was no tactician, but he knew the human heart. He knew that at any cost France must lead off with a victory, not only for the sake of the little man in the red trousers, but to impress watching Europe, and perhaps snatch an ally from among the hesitating powers. And the result was Saarbrueck. The news of it filtered through to Colonel Gilbert, who was now quartered in the grey, picturesque Watrin barracks at Bastia, which jut out between the old harbour and the plain of Biguglia. The colonel did not believe half of it. It is always safe to subtract from good news. But he sat down at once and wrote to Denise Lange. He had not seen her, had not communicated with her, since he had asked her to marry him, and she had refused. He was old enough to be her father. He had asked her to marry him because she would not sell Perucca, and he wanted that estate; which was not the right motive, but it is the usual one with men who are past the foolishness of youth—that foolishness which is better than all the wisdom of the ages.

From having had nothing to do, Colonel Gilbert found himself thrown into a whirl of work, or what would have been a whirl with a man less calm and placid. Very much at ease, in white linen clothes, he sat in his room in the bastion, and transacted the affairs of his command with a leisurely good nature which showed his complete grasp of the situation.

With regard to Denise, this middle-aged, cynical Frenchman grasped the situation also. He was slowly and surely falling in love with her. And she herself had given him the first push down that facile descent when she had refused to be his wife.

"Mademoiselle," he wrote, "to quarrel is, I suppose, in the air of Corsica, and when we parted at your gate some time ago, I am afraid I left you harbouring a feeling of resentment against me. At this time, and in the adverse days that I foresee must inevitably be in store for France, none can afford to part with friends who by any means can preserve them. In our respective positions, you and I must rise above small differences of opinion; and I place myself unreservedly at your service. I write to tell you that I have this morning good news from France. We have won a small victory at Saarbrueck. So far, so good. But, in case of a reverse, there is only too much reason to fear that internal disturbances will arise in France, and consequently in this unfortunate island. It is, therefore, my duty to urge upon you the necessity of quitting Perucca without delay. If you will not consent to leave the island, come at all events into Bastia, where, at a few minutes' notice, I shall be able to place you in a position of safety. I trust I am not one who is given to exaggerating danger. Ask Mademoiselle Brun, who has known me since, as a young man, I had the privilege of serving under your father, a general who had the gift of drawing out from those about him such few soldierly qualities as they might possess."

Denise received this letter by post the next morning, and, after reading it twice, handed it to Mademoiselle Brun, who was much too wise a woman to ask for an explanation of those parts of it which she did not comprehend. Indeed, she was manlike enough to pass on with an unimpaired understanding to the second part of the letter, whereas most women would have been so consumed by curiosity as to be unable to give more than half their mind to the colonel's further news.

"And—?" inquired mademoiselle—a Frenchwoman's way of asking a thousand questions in one. Mademoiselle Brun knew all the conversational tricks that serve to economize words.

"It is all based upon supposition," said the erstwhile mathematical instructress of the school in the Rue du Cherche-Midi. "It will be time enough to arrive at a decision when the reverse comes. The Count de Vasselot or the Abbe Susini will, no doubt, warn us in time."

"Ah!" said Mademoiselle Brun.

"But, if you like, I will write to the Count de Vasselot," said Denise, in the voice of one making a concession.

Mademoiselle Brun thought deeply before replying. It is so easy to take a wrong turning at the cross-roads of life, and assuredly Denise stood at a carrefour now.

"Yes," said mademoiselle at length; "it would be well to do that."

And Denise went away to write the letter that Lory had asked for in case she wanted him. She did not show it to Mademoiselle Brun, but went out and posted it herself in the little square box, painted white, affixed to the white wall on the high-road, and just within sight of Olmeta. When she returned she went into the garden again, where she spent so great a part of these hot days that her face was burnt to a healthy brown, which was in keeping with her fearless eyes and carriage. Mademoiselle Brun, on the other hand, spent most of her days indoors, divining perhaps that Denise had of late fallen into an unconscious love of solitude.

Denise returned to the house at luncheon-time, entered by the window, and caught Mademoiselle Brun hastily shutting an atlas.

"I was wondering," she said, "where Saarbrueck might be, and whether any one we know had time to get there before the battle."

"Yes."

"But Colonel Gilbert will tell us."

"Colonel Gilbert?" inquired Denise, turning rather sharply.

"Yes. I think he will come to-day or to-morrow."

And Mademoiselle Brun was right. In the full heat of the afternoon the great bell at the gate gave forth a single summons; for the colonel was always gentle in his ways.

"I made an opportunity," he said, "to escape from the barracks this hot day."

But he looked cool enough, and greeted Denise with his usual leisurely, friendly bow. His manner conveyed, better than any words, that she need feel no uneasiness on his account, and could treat him literally at his word, as a friend.

"In order to tell you, with all reserve, the good news," he continued.

"With all reserve!" echoed Mademoiselle Brun.

"Good news in a French newspaper, Mademoiselle—" And he finished with a gesture eloquent of the deepest distrust.

"I was wondering," said Mademoiselle Brun, speaking slowly, and in a manner that demanded for the time the colonel's undivided attention, "whether our friend the Count de Vasselot could have been at Saarbrueck."

"The Count de Vasselot," said Colonel Gilbert, with an air of friendly surprise. "Has he quitted his beloved chateau? He is so attached to that old house, you know."

"He has joined his regiment," replied Mademoiselle Brun, upon whom the burden of the conversation fell; for Denise had gone to the open window, and was closing the shutters against the sun.

"Ah! Then I can tell you that he was not at Saarbrueck. The count's regiment is not in that part of the country. I was forgetting that he was a soldier. He is, by the way, your nearest neighbour."

The colonel rose as he spoke, and went to the window—not to that where Denise was standing, but to the other, of which the sun-blinds were only half closed.

"You can, of course, see the chateau from here?" he said musingly.

"Yes," answered Mademoiselle Brun, with an uneasy glance.

What was Colonel Gilbert going to say?

He stood for a moment looking down into the valley, while Denise and Mademoiselle Brun waited.

"And you have perceived nothing that would seem to confirm the gossip current regarding your—enemy?" he asked, with a good-natured, deprecatory laugh.

"What gossip?" asked mademoiselle, bluntly.

The colonel shrugged his shoulders without looking round.

"Oh," he answered, "one does not believe all one hears. Besides, there are many who think that in such a remote spot as Corsica, it is not necessary to observe the ordinary—what shall I say?—etiquette of society."

He laughed uneasily, and spread out his hands as if, for his part, he would rather dismiss the subject. But Mademoiselle Brun could be frankly feminine at times.

"What is the gossip to which you refer?" she asked again.

"Oh, I do not believe a word of it—though I, myself, have seen. Well, mademoiselle—you will excuse my frankness?—they say there is some one in the chateau—some one whom the count wishes to conceal, you understand."

"Ah!" said mademoiselle, indifferently.

Denise said nothing. She was looking out of the window with a face as hard as the face of Mademoiselle Brun. She looked at her watch, seemed to make a quick mental calculation, and then turned and spoke to Colonel Gilbert with steady, smiling eyes.

"You have not told us your war news yet," she said.

So he told them what he knew, which, as a matter of fact, did not amount to much. Then he took his leave, and rode home in the cool of the evening—a solitary, brooding man, who had missed his way somehow early on the road of life, and lacked perhaps the strength of mind to go back and try again.

Denise said good-bye to him in the same friendly spirit which he had inaugurated. She was standing with her back to the window from which she had looked down on to the chateau of Vasselot while Colonel Gilbert related his idle gossip respecting that house. And Mademoiselle Brun, who remembered such trifles, noted that she never looked out of that window again, but avoided it as one would avoid a cupboard where there is a skeleton.

Denise, who consulted her watch again so soon as the colonel had left, wrote another letter, which she addressed in an open envelope to the postmaster at Marseilles, and enclosed a number of stamps. She went out on to the high-road, and waited there in the shade of the trees for the diligence, which would pass at four o'clock on its way to Bastia.

The driver of the diligence, like many who are on the road and have but a passing glimpse of many men and many things, was a good-natured man, and willingly charged himself with Denise's commission. For that which she had enclosed was not a letter, but a telegram to be despatched from Marseilles on the arrival of the mail steamer there. It was addressed to Lory de Vasselot at the Cercle Militaire in Paris, and contained the words—

"Please return unopened the letter posted to-day."



CHAPTER XV.

WAR.

"When half-gods go, The gods arrive."

"Then," said the Baroness de Melide, "I shall go down to St. Germain en Pre, and say my prayers." And she rang the bell for her carriage.

On all great occasions in life, the Baroness de Melide had taken her overburdened heart in a carriage and pair to St. Germain en Pre. For she had always had a carriage and pair for the mere ringing of a bell ever since her girlhood, when the Baron de Melide had, with much assistance from her, laid his name and fortune at her feet. When she had helped him to ask her to be his wife, she had ordered the carriage thus, as she was ordering it now in the month of August, 1870, on being told by her husband that the battle of Woerth had been fought and lost, and that Lory de Vasselot was safe.

"The Madeleine is nearer," suggested the baron, a large man, with a vacant face which concealed a very mine of common sense, "and you could give me a lift as far as the club."

"The Madeleine is all very well for a wedding or a funeral or a great public festivity of any sort," said the baroness, with a harmless, light manner of talking of grave subjects which is a closed book to the ordinary stolid British mind; "but when one has a prayer, there is nowhere like St. Germain en Pre, which is old and simple and dirty, so that one feels like a poor woman. I shall put on an old dress."

She looked at her husband with a capable nod, as if to convey the comforting assurance that he could leave this matter entirely to her.

"Yes," said the baron; "do as you will."

Which permission the world was pleased to consider superfluous in the present marital case.

"It is," he said, "the occasion for a prayer; and say a word for France. And Lory is safe—one of very, very few survivors. Remember that in your prayers, ma mie, and remember me."

"I will see about it," answered the baroness. "If I have time, I will perhaps put in a word for one who is assuredly a great stupid—no name mentioned, you understand."

So the Baroness de Melide went to the gloomy old church of her choice, and sent up an incoherent prayer, such as were arising from all over France at this time. On returning by the Boulevard St. Germain, she met a friend, a woman whose husband had fallen at Weissembourg, who gave her more news from the front. The streets were crowded and yet idle. The men stood apart in groups, talking in a low voice: the women stood apart and watched them—for it is only in times of peace that the women manage France.

The baroness went home, nervous, ill at ease. She hardly noticed that the door was held open by a maid-servant. The men had all gone out for news—some to enroll themselves in the National Guard. She went up to the drawing-room, and there, seated at her writing-table with his back turned towards her, was Lory de Vasselot. All the brightness had gone from his uniform. He turned as she entered the room.

"Mon Dieu!" she said, "what is it?"

"What is what?" he answered gravely.

"Why, your face," said the baroness. "Look—look at it!" She took him by the arm, and turned him towards a mirror, half hidden in hot-house flowers. "Look!" she cried again. "Mon Dieu! it is a tragedy, your face. What is it?"

Lory shrugged his shoulders.

"I was at Woerth," he explained, "two days ago. I suppose Woerth will be written for life in the face of every Frenchman who was there. They were three to one. They are three to one wherever we turn."

He sat down again at the writing-table, and the baroness stood behind him.

"And this is war," she said, tapping slowly on the carpet with her foot.

She laid her hand on his shoulder, and, noting a quick movement of withdrawal, glanced down.

"Ach!" she exclaimed, in a whisper, as she drew back.

The shoulder and sleeve of his tunic were stained a deep brown. The gold lace was green in places and sticky. In an odd silence she unbuttoned her glove, and laid it quietly aside.

"It seems, mon ami, that we have only been playing at life up to now," she said, after a pause.

And Lory did not answer her. He had several letters lying before him, and had taken up his pen again.

"What brings you to Paris?" asked the baroness, suddenly.

"The emperor," he answered. "It is a queer story, and I can tell you part of it. After Woerth, I was given a staff appointment—and why? Because my occupation was gone; I had no men left." With a quick gesture he described the utter annihilation of his troop. "And I was sent into Metz with despatches. While I was still there—judge of my surprise!—the emperor sent for me. You know him. He was sitting at a table, and looked a big man. Afterwards, when he stood up, I saw he was small. He bowed as I entered the room—for he is polite even to the meanest private of a line regiment—and as he bowed he winced. Even that movement gave him pain. And then he smiled, with an effort. 'Monsieur de Vasselot,' he said; and I bowed. 'A Corsican,' he went on. 'Yes, sire.' Then he took up a pen, and examined it. He wanted something to look at, though he might safely have looked at me. He could look any man in the face at any time, for his eyes tell no tales. They are dull and veiled; you know them, for you have spoken to him often."

"Yes; and I have seen the great snake at the Jardin d'Acclimatation," answered the Baroness de Melide, quietly.

"Then," continued Lory, "still looking at the pen, he spoke slowly as if he had thought it all out before I entered the room. 'When my uncle fell upon evil times he naturally turned to his fellow-countrymen.' 'Yes, sire.' 'I do not know you, Monsieur de Vasselot, but I know your name. I am going to trust you entirely. I want you to go to Paris for me.'"

"And that is all you are going to tell me?" said the baroness.

"That is all I can tell you. Whatever he may be, he is more than a brave man—he is a stoic. I arrived an hour ago, and went to the club for my letters, but I did not dare to go in, because it is evident that I am from the front. Look at my clothes. That is why I come here and present myself before you as I am. I must beg your hospitality for a few hours and the run of your writing-table."

The baroness nodded her head repeatedly as she looked at him. It was not only from his gold-laced uniform that the brightness had gone, but from himself. His manner was abrupt. He was almost stern. This, again, was war.

"You know that now, as always, our house is yours," she said quietly; for it is not all light hearts that have nothing in them.

Then, being a practical Frenchwoman—and there is no more practical being in the world—she rang for luncheon.

"One sees," she said, "that you are hungry. One must eat though empires fall."

"Ah!" said Lory, turning sharply to look at her. "You talk like that in Paris, do you?"

"In the streets, my cousin, they speak plainer language than that. But Henri will tell you what they are saying on the pavement. I have sent for him to the club to come home to luncheon. He forgives me much, that poor man, but he would never forgive me if I did not tell him that you were in Paris."

"Thank you," answered Lory. "I shall be glad to see him. There are things which he ought to know, which I cannot tell you."

"You think I am not discreet," said the baroness, slowly drawing the pins from her smart hat.

Lory looked up at her with a laugh, which was perhaps what she wanted, for there is no cunning like the cunning of a woman who seeks to charm a man from one humour to another. And when the baroness had first seen Lory, she thought that his heart was broken—by Woerth.

"You are beautiful, but not discreet," he answered.

"That is the worst of men," she said reflectively, as she laid her hat aside—"they always want an impossible combination."

She looked back at him over her shoulder and laughed, for she saw that she was gaining her point. The quiet of this luxurious house, her own personality, the subtle domesticity of her action in taking off her hat in his presence—all these were soothing a mind rasped and torn by battle and defeat. But there was something yet which she had not grasped, and she knew it. She glanced at the letters on the table before him. As if the thought were transmitted across the room to him, Lory took up an open telegram, and read it with a puzzled face. He half turned towards her as if about to speak, but closed his lips again.

"Yes," said the baroness, lightly. "What is it?"

"It is," he explained, after a pause, "that I have had so little to do with women."

"Except me, mon cousin," said the baroness, coming nearer to the writing-table.

"Except you, ma cousine," he answered, turning in his chair and taking her hand.

He glanced up at her with eyes that would appear to the ordinary British mind to express a passionate devotion, eminently French and thrilling and terrible, but which really reflected only a very honest and brotherly affection. For a Frenchman never hates or loves as much as he thinks he does.

"Well," said the baroness, practically, "what is it?"

"At the club," explained Lory, "I found a letter and a telegram from Corsica."

"Both from Denise?" asked the baroness, rather bluntly.

"Both from Mademoiselle Lange. See how things hinge upon a trifling chance—how much, we cannot tell! I happened to open the telegram first, and it told me to return the letter unopened."

As he spoke he handed her the grey sheet upon which were pasted the narrow blue paper ribbons bearing the text. The baroness read the message slowly and carefully. She glanced over the paper, down at his head, with a little wise smile full of contempt for his limited male understanding.

"And the letter?" she inquired.

He showed her a sealed envelope addressed by himself to Denise at Perucca. She took it up and turned it over slowly. It was stamped and ready for the post. She then threw it down with a short laugh.

"I was thinking," she explained, "of the difference between men and women. A woman would have filled a cup with boiling water and laid that letter upon it. It is quite easy. Why, we were taught it at the convent school! You could have opened the letter and read it, and then closed it again and returned it. By that simple subterfuge you would have known the contents, and would still have had the credit for doing as you were told. And I think three women out of five would have done it, and the whole five would have wanted to do it. Ah! you may laugh. You do not know what wretches we are compared to men—compared especially to some few of them; to a Baron Henri de Melide or a Count de Vasselot—who are honourable men, my cousin."

She touched him lightly on the shoulder with one finger, and then turned away to look with thoughtful eyes out of the window.

"I wonder what is in that letter," said Lory, returning to his pen.

The baroness turned on her heel and looked at him with her contemptuous smile again.

"Oh," she said carelessly, "she was probably in a difficulty, which solved itself after the letter was posted. Or she was afraid of something, and found that her fears were unnecessary. That is all, no doubt."

There is, it appears, an esprit de sexe which prevents women from giving each other away.

"So you merely placed the letter in an envelope and are returning it, thus, without comment?" inquired the baroness.

"Yes," answered Lory, who was writing a letter now.

And his cousin stood looking at him with an amused and yet tender smile in her gay eyes. She remained silent until he had finished.

"There," he said, taking an envelope and addressing it hurriedly, "that is done. It is to the Abbe Susini at Olmeta; and it contains some of those things, my cousin, that I cannot tell you."

"Do you think I care," said the baroness, "for your stupid politics? Do you think any woman cares for politics who has found some stupid man to care for her? There is my stupid in the street—on his new horse."

In a moment Lory was at the window.

"A new horse," he said earnestly. "I did not know that. Why did you not tell me?"

"We were talking of empires," replied the baroness. "By the way," she added, in after-thought, "is our good friend Colonel Gilbert in Corsica?"

"Yes—he is at Bastia."

"Ah," said the baroness, looking reflectively at Denise's telegram, which she still held in her hand, "I thought he was."

Then that placid man, the Baron Henri de Melide, came into the room, and shook hands in the then novel English fashion, looking at his lifelong friend with a dull and apathetic eye.

"From the frontier?" he inquired.

Lory laughed curtly. He had returned from that Last Frontier, where each one of us shall inevitably be asked "Si monsieur a quelque chose a declarer?"

"I shall give you ten minutes for your secrets, and then luncheon will be ready," said the baroness, quitting the room.

And Lory told his friend those things which were not for a woman's hearing.

At luncheon both men were suspiciously cheerful; and, doubtless, their companion read them like open books. Immediately after coffee Lory took his leave.

"I leave Paris to-night," he said, with his old cheerfulness. "This war is not over yet. We have not the shadow of a chance of winning, but we shall perhaps be able to show the world that France can still fight."

Which prophecy assuredly came true.



CHAPTER XVI.

A MASTERFUL MAN.

"Tous les raisonnements des hommes ne valent pas un sentiment d'une femme."

It would seem that Lory de Vasselot had played the part of a stormy petrel when he visited Paris, for that calm Frenchman, the Baron de Melide, packed his wife off to Provence the same night, and the letter that Lory wrote to the Abbe Susini, reaching Olmeta three days later, aroused its recipient from a contemplative perusal of the Petit Bastiais as if it had been a bomb-shell.

The abbe threw aside his newspaper and cigarette. He was essentially a man of action. He had been on his feet all day, hurrying hither and thither over his widespread parish, interfering in this man's business and that woman's quarrels with that hastiness which usually characterizes the doings of such as pride themselves upon their capability for action and contempt for mere passive thought. It was now evening, and a blessed cool air was stealing down from the mountains. Successive days of unbroken sunshine had burnt all the western side of the island, had almost dried up the Aliso, which crept, a mere rivulet in its stormy bed, towards St. Florent and the sea.

Susini went to-the window of his little room and opened the wooden shutters. His house is next to the church at Olmeta and faces north-west; so that in the summer the evening sun glares across the valley into its windows. He was no great scholar, and had but a poor record in the archives of the college at Corte. Lory de Vasselot had written in a hurry, and the letter was a long one. Susini read it once, and was turning it to read again, when, glancing out of the window, he saw Denise cross the Place, and go into the church.

"Ah!" he said aloud, "that will save me a long walk."

Then he read the letter again, with curt nods of the head from time to time, as if Lory were making points or giving minute instructions. He folded the letter, placed it in the pocket of his cassock, and gave himself a smart tap on the chest, as if to indicate that this was the moment and himself the man. He was brisk and full of self-confidence, managing, interfering, commanding, as all true Corsicans are. He took his hat, hardly paused to blow the dust off it, and hurried out into the sunlit Place. He went rather slowly up the church steps, however, for he was afraid of Denise. Her youth, and something spring-like and mystic in her being, disturbed him, made him uneasy and shy; which was perhaps his reason for drawing aside the heavy leather curtain and going into the church, instead of waiting for her outside. He preferred to meet her on his own ground—in the chill air, heavy with the odour of stale incense, and in the dim light of that place where he laid down, in blunt language, his own dim reading of God's law.

He stood just within the curtain, looking at Denise, who was praying on one of the low chairs a few yards away from him; and he was betrayed into a characteristic impatience when she remained longer on her knees than he (as a man) deemed necessary at that moment. He showed his impatience by shuffling with his feet, and still Denise took no notice.

The abbe, by chance or instinct, slipped his hand within his cassock, and drew out the letter which he had just received. The rustle of the thin paper brought Denise to her feet in a moment, facing him.

"The French mail has arrived," said the priest.

"Yes," replied Denise, quickly, looking down at his hands.

They were alone in the church which, as a matter of fact, was never very well attended; and the abbe, who had not that respect for God or man which finds expression in a lowered voice, spoke in his natural tones.

"And I have news which affects you, mademoiselle."

"I suppose that any news of France must do that," replied Denise, with some spirit.

"Of course—of course," said the abbe, rubbing his chin with his forefinger, and making a rasping sound on that shaven surface.

He reflected in silence for a moment, and Denise made, in her turn, a hasty movement of impatience. She had only met the abbe once or twice; and all that she knew of him was the fact that he had an imperious way with him which aroused a spirit of opposition in herself.

"Well, Monsieur l'Abbe," she said, "what is it?"

"It is that Mademoiselle Brun and yourself will have but two hours to prepare for your departure from the Casa Perucca," he answered. And he drew out a large silver watch, which he consulted with the quiet air of a commander.

Denise glanced at him with some surprise, and then smiled.

"By whose orders, Monsieur l'Abbe?" she inquired with a dangerous gentleness.

Then the priest realized that she meant fight, and all his combativeness leapt, as it were, to meet hers. His eyes flashed in the gloom of the twilit church.

"I, mademoiselle," he said, with that humility which is nought but an aggravated form of pride. He tapped himself on the chest with such emphasis that a cloud of dust flew out of his cassock, and he blew defiance at her through it. "I—who speak, take the liberty of making this suggestion. I, the Abbe Susini—and your humble servant."

Which was not true: for he was no man's servant, and only offered to heaven a half-defiant allegiance. Denise wanted to know the contents of the letter he held crushed within his fingers; so she restrained an impulse to answer him hastily, and merely laughed. The priest thought that he had gained his point.

"I can give you two hours," he said, "in which to make your preparations. At seven o'clock I shall arrive at the Casa Perucca with a carriage, in which to conduct Mademoiselle Brun and yourself to St. Florent, where a yacht is awaiting you."

Denise bit her lip impatiently, and watched the thin brown fingers that were clenched round the letter.

"Then what is your news from France?" she asked. "From whence is your letter—from the front?"

"It is from Paris," answered the abbe, unfolding the paper carelessly; and Denise would not have been human had she resisted the temptation to try and decipher it.

"And—?"

"And," continued the abbe, shrugging his shoulders, "I have nothing to add, mademoiselle. You must quit Perucca before the morning. The news is bad, I tell you frankly. The empire is tottering to its fall, and the news that I have in secret will be known all over Corsica to-morrow. Who knows? the island may flare up like a heap of bracken, and no one bearing a French name, or known to have French sympathies, will be safe. You know how you yourself are regarded in Olmeta. It is foolhardy to venture here this evening."

Denise shrugged her shoulders. She had plenty of spirit, and, at all events, that courage which refuses to admit the existence of danger. Perhaps she was not thinking of danger, or of herself, at all.

"Then the Count Lory de Vasselot has ordered us out of Corsica?" she asked.

"Mademoiselle, we are wasting time," answered the priest, folding the letter and replacing it in his pocket. "A yacht is awaiting you off St. Florent. All is organized—"

"By the Count Lory de Vasselot?"

The abbe stamped his foot impatiently.

"Bon Dieu, mademoiselle!" he cried, "you will make me lose my temper. The yacht, I tell you, is at the entrance of the bay, and by to-morrow morning it will be halfway to France. You cannot stay here. You must make your choice between returning to France and going into the Watrin barracks at Bastia. Colonel Gilbert will, I fancy, know how to make you obey him. And all Corsica is in the hands of Colonel Gilbert—though no one but Colonel Gilbert knows that."

He spoke rapidly, thrusting forward his dark, eager face, forgetting all his shyness, glaring defiance into her quiet eyes.

"There, mademoiselle—and now your answer?"

"Would it not be well if the Count Lory de Vasselot attended to his own affairs at the Chateau de Vasselot, and the interests he has there?" replied Denise, turning away from his persistent eyes.

And the abbe's face dropped as if she had shot him.

"Good!" he said, after a moment's hesitation. "I wash my hands of you. You refuse to go?"

"Yes," answered Denise, going towards the door with a high head, and, it is possible, an aching heart. For the two often go together.

And the abbe, a man little given to the concealment of his feelings, shook his fist at the leather curtain as it fell into place behind her.

"Ah—these women!" he said aloud. "A secret that is thirty years old!"

Denise hurried down the steps and away from the village. She knew that the postman, having passed through Olmeta, must now be on the high-road on his way to Perucca, and she felt sure that he must have in his bag the letter of which she had followed, in imagination, the progress during the last three days.

"Now it is in the train from Paris to Marseilles; now it is on board the Perseverance, steaming across the Gulf of Lyons," had been her thought night and morning. "Now it is at Bastia," she had imagined on waking at dawn that day. And at length she had it now, in thought, close to her on the Olmeta road in front of her.

At a turn of the road she caught sight of the postman, trudging along beneath the heavy chestnut trees. Then at length she overtook him, and he stopped to open the bag slung across his shoulder. He was a silent man, who saluted her awkwardly, and handed her several letters and a newspaper. With another salutation he walked on, leaving Denise standing by the low wall of the road alone. There was only one letter for her. She turned it over and examined the seal: a bare sword with a gay French motto beneath it—the device of the Vasselots.

She opened the envelope after a long pause. It contained nothing but her own travel-stained letter, of which the seal had not been broken. And, as she thoughtfully examined both envelopes, there glistened in her eyes that light which it is vouchsafed to a few men to see, and which is the nearest approach to the light of heaven that ever illumines this poor earth. For love has, among others, this peculiarity: that it may live in the same heart with a great anger, and seems to gain only strength from the proximity.

Denise replaced the two letters in her pocket and walked on. A carriage passed her, and she received a curt bow and salutation from the Abbe Susini who was in it. The carriage turned to the right at the crossroads, and rattled down the hill in the direction of Vasselot. Denise's head went an inch higher at the sight of it.

"I met the Abbe Susini at Olmeta," she said to Mademoiselle Brun, a few minutes later in the great bare drawing-room of the Casa Perucca. "And he transmitted the Count de Vasselot's command that we should leave the Casa Perucca to-night for France. I suggested that the order should be given to the Chateau de Vasselot instead of the Casa Perucca, and the abbe took me at my word. He has gone to the Chateau de Vasselot now in a carriage."

Mademoiselle Brun, who was busy with her work near the window, laid aside her needle and looked at Denise. She had a faculty of instantly going, as it were, to the essential part of a question and tearing the heart out of it: which faculty is, with all respect, more a masculine than a feminine quality. She ignored the side-issues and pounced, as it were, upon the central thread—the reason that Lory de Vasselot had had for sending such an order. She rose and tore open the newspaper, glanced at the war-news, and laid it aside. Then she opened a letter addressed to herself. It was on superlatively thick paper and bore a coronet in one corner.

"My Dear" (it ran),

"This much I have learnt from two men who will tell me nothing—France is lost. The Holy Virgin help us!

"Your devoted

"Jane De Melide."

Mademoiselle Brun turned away to the window, and stood there with her back to Denise for some moments. At length she came back, and the girl saw something in the grey and wizened face which stirred her heart, she knew not why; for all great thoughts and high qualities have power to illumine the humblest countenance.

"You may stay here if you like," said Mademoiselle Brun, "but I am going back to France to-night."

"What do you mean?"

For reply Mademoiselle Brun handed her the Baroness do Melide's letter.

"Yes," said Denise, when she had read the note. "But I do not understand."

"No. Because you never knew your father—the bravest man God ever created. But some other man will teach you some day."

"Teach me what?" asked Denise, looking with wonder at the little woman. "Of what are you thinking?"

"Of that of which Lory de Vasselot, and Henri de Melide, and Jane, and all good Frenchmen and Frenchwomen are thinking at this moment—of France, and only France," said Mademoiselle Brun; and out of her mouse-like eyes there shone, at that moment, the soul of a man—and of a brave man.

Her lips quivered for a moment, before she shut them with a snap. Perhaps Denise wanted to be persuaded to return to France. Perhaps the blood that ran in her veins was stirred by the spirit of Mademoiselle Brun, whose arguments were short and sharp, as became a woman much given to economy in words. At all events, the girl listened in silence while mademoiselle explained that even two women might, in some minute degree, help France at this moment. For patriotism, like courage, is infectious; and it is a poor heart that hurries to abandon a sinking ship.

It thus came about that, soon after sunset, Mademoiselle Brun and Denise hurried down to the cross-roads to intercept the carriage, of which they could perceive the lights slowly approaching across the dark valley of Vasselot.



CHAPTER XVII.

WITHOUT DRUM OR TRUMPET.

"We do squint each through his loophole, And then dream broad heaven Is but the patch we see."

It was almost dark when the abbe's carriage reached the valley, and the driver paused to light the two stable-lanterns tied with string to the dilapidated lamp-brackets. The abbe was impatient, and fidgeted in his seat. He was at heart an autocrat, and hated to be defied even by one over whom he could not pretend to have control. He snapped his finger and thumb as he thought of Denise.

"She puzzles me," he muttered. "What does she want? Bon Dieu, what does she want?"

Then he spoke angrily to the driver, whose movements were slow and clumsy.

"At all events my task is easier here," he consoled himself by saying as the carriage approached the chateau, "now that I am rid of these women."

At last they reached the foot of the slope leading up to the half-ruined house, which loomed against the evening sky immediately above them; and the driver pulled up his restive horses with an air significant of arrival.

"Right up to the chateau," cried the Abbe from beneath the hood.

But the man made no movement, and sat on the box muttering to himself.

"What!" cried the abbe, who had caught some words. "Jean has the evil eye! What of Jean's evil eye? Here, I will give you my rosary to put round your coward's neck. No! Then down you get, my friend. You can wait here till we come back."

As he spoke he leapt out, and, climbing into the box, pushed the driver unceremoniously from his seat, snatching the reins and whip from his hands.

"He!" he cried. "Allons, my little ones!"

And with whip and voice he urged the horses up the slope at a canter, while the carriage swayed across from one great tree to another. They reached the summit in safety, and the priest pulled the horses up at the great door—the first carriage to disturb the quiet of that spot for nearly a generation. He twisted the reins round the whip-socket, and clambering down rang the great bell. It answered to his imperious summons by the hollow clang that betrays an empty house. No one came. He stood without, drumming with his fist on the doorpost. Then he turned to listen. Some one was approaching from the darkness of the trees. But it was only the driver following sullenly on foot.

"Here!" said the priest, recognizing him. "Go to your horses!"

As he spoke he was already untying one of the stable-lanterns that swung at the lamp-bracket. His eyes gleamed beneath the brim of his broad hat. He was quick and anxious.

"Wait here till I come back," he said; and, keeping close to the wall, he disappeared among the low bushes.

There was another way in by a door half hidden among the ivy, which Jean used for his mysterious comings and goings, and of which the abbe had a key. He had brought it with him to-night by a lucky chance. He had to push aside the ivy which hung from the walls in great ropes, and only found the keyhole after a hurried search. But the lock was in good order. Jean, it appeared, was a careful man.

Susini hurried through a long passage to the little round room where the Count de Vasselot had lived so long. He stopped with his nose in the air, and sniffed aloud. The atmosphere was heavy with the smell of stale tobacco, and yet there could be detected the sweeter odour of smoke scarcely cold. The room must have been inhabited only a few hours ago. The abbe opened the window, and the smell of carnations swept in like the breath of another world. He returned to the room, and, opening his lantern, lighted a candle that stood on the mantelpiece. He looked round. Sundry small articles in daily use—the count's pipe, his old brass tobacco-box: a few such things that a man lives with, and puts in his pocket when he goes away—were missing.

"Buon Diou! Buon Diou! Buon Diou—gone!" muttered the priest, lapsing into his native dialect. He looked around him with keen eyes—at the blackened walls, at the carpet worn into holes. "That Jean must have known something that I do not know. All the same, I shall look through the house."

He blew out the candle, and taking the lantern quitted the room. He searched the whole house—passing from empty room to empty room. The reception-rooms were huge and sparingly furnished with those thin-legged chairs and ancient card-tables which recall the days of Letitia Ramolino and that easy-going Charles Buonaparte, who brought into the world the greatest captain that armies have ever seen. The bedrooms were small: all alike smelt of mouldering age. In one room the abbe stopped and raised his inquiring nose; the room had been inhabited by a woman—years and years ago.

He searched the house from top to bottom, and there was no one in it. The abbe had failed in the two missions confided to him by Lory, and he was one to whom failure was peculiarly bitter. With respect to the two women, he had perhaps scarcely expected to succeed, for he had lived fifty years in the world, and his calling had brought him into daily contact with that salutary chastening of the spirit which must assuredly be the lot of a man who seeks to enforce his will upon women. But his failure to find the old Count de Vasselot was a more serious matter.

He returned slowly to the carriage, and told the driver to return to Olmeta.

"I have changed my plans," he said, still mindful of the secret he had received with other pastoral charges from his predecessor. "Jean is not in the chateau, so I shall not go to St. Florent to-night."

He leant forward, and looked up at the old castle outlined against the sky. A breeze was springing up with the suddenness of all atmospheric changes in these latitudes, and the old trees creaked and groaned, while the leaves had already that rustling brittleness of sound that betokens the approach of autumn.

As they crossed the broad valley the wind increased, sweeping up the course of the Aliso in wild gusts. It was blowing a gale before the horses fell to a quick walk up the hill; and Mademoiselle Brun's small figure, planted in the middle of the road, was the first indication that the driver had of the presence of the two women, though the widow Andrei, who accompanied them and carried their travelling-bags, had already called out more than once.

"The Abbe Susini?" cried Mademoiselle Brun, in curt interrogation.

In reply, the driver pointed to the inside of the carriage with the handle of his whip.

"You are alone?" said mademoiselle, in surprise.

The light of the lantern shone brightly on her, and on the dimmer form of Denise, silent and angry in the background; for Denise had allowed her inclination to triumph over her pride, which conquest usually leaves a sore heart behind it.

"But, yes!" answered the abbe; alighting quickly enough.

He guessed instantly that Denise had changed her mind, and was indiscreet enough to put his thoughts into words.

"So mademoiselle has thought better of it?" he said; and got no answer for his pains.

Both Mademoiselle Brun and Denise were looking curiously at the interior of the carriage from which the priest emerged, leaving it, as they noted, empty.

"There is yet time to go to St. Florent?" inquired the elder woman.

The priest grabbed at his hat as a squall swept up the road, whirling the dust high above their heads.

"Whether we shall get on board is another matter," he muttered by way of answer. "Come, get into the carriage; we have no time to lose. It will be a bad night at sea."

"Then, for my sins I shall be sea-sick," said Mademoiselle Brun, imperturbably.

She took her bag from the hand of the widow Andrei, and would have it nowhere but on her lap, where she held it during the rapid drive, sitting bolt upright, staring straight in front of her into the face of the abbe.

No one spoke, for each had thoughts sufficient to occupy the moment. Susini perhaps had the narrowest vein of reflection upon which to draw, and therefore fidgeted in his seat and muttered to himself, for his mental range was limited to Olmeta and the Chateau de Vasselot. Mademoiselle Brun was thinking of France—of her great past and her dim, uncertain future. While Denise sat stiller and more silent than either, for her thoughts were at once as wide as the whole world, and as narrow as the human heart.

At a turn in the road she looked up, and saw the sharp outline of the Casa Perucca, black and sombre against a sky now lighted by a rising moon, necked and broken by heavy clouds, with deep lurking shadows and mountains of snowy whiteness. In the Casa Perucca she had learnt what life means, and no man or woman ever forgets the place where that lesson has been acquired.

"I shall come back," she whispered, looking up at the great rock with its giant pines and the two square chimneys half hidden in the foliage.

And the Abbe Susini, seeing a movement of her lips, glanced curiously at her. He was still wondering what she wanted. "Mon Dieu," he was reflecting a second time, "what does she want?"

He stopped the carriage outside the town of St. Florent at the end of the long causeway built across the marsh, where the wind swept now from the open bay with a salt flavour to it. He alighted, and took Denise's bag, rightly concluding that Mademoiselle Brun would prefer to carry her own.

"Follow me," he said, taking a delight in being as curt as Mademoiselle Brun herself, and in denying them the explanations they were too proud to demand.

They walked abreast through the narrow street dimly lighted by a single lamp swinging on a gibbet at the corner, turned sharp to the left, and found themselves suddenly at the water's edge. A few boats bumped lazily at some steps where the water lapped. It was blowing hard out in the bay, but this corner was protected by a half-ruined house built on a projecting rock.

The priest looked round.

"He! la-bas!" he called out, in a guarded voice. But he received no answer.

"Wait here," he said to the two women. "I will fetch him from the cafe." And he disappeared.

Denise and mademoiselle stood in silence listening to the lapping of the water and the slow, muffled bumping of the boats until the abbe returned, followed by a man who slouched along on bare feet.

"Yes," he was saying, "the yacht was there at sunset. I saw her myself lying just outside the point. But it is folly to try and reach her to-night; wait till the morning, Monsieur l'Abbe."

"And find her gone," answered the priest. "No, no; we embark to-night, my friend. If these ladies are willing, surely a St. Florent man will not hold back?"

"But you have not told these ladies of the danger. The wind is blowing right into the bay; we cannot tack out against it. It will take me two hours to row out single-handed with some one baling out the whole time."

"But I will pull an oar with you," answered Susini. "Come, show us which is your boat. Mademoiselle Brun will bale out, and the young lady will steer. We shall be quite a family party."

There was no denying a man who took matters into his own hands so energetically.

"You can pull an oar?" inquired the boatman, doubtfully.

"I was born at Bonifacio, my friend. Come, I will take the bow oar if you will find me an oilskin coat. It will not be too dry up in the bows to-night."

And, like most masterful people—right or wrong—the abbe had his way, even to the humble office assigned to Mademoiselle Brun.

"You will need to remove your glove and bare your arm," explained the boatman, handing her an old tin mug. "But you will not find the water cold. It is always warmer at night. Thus the good God remembers poor fishermen. The seas will come over the bows when we round this corner; they will rise up and hit the abbe in the back, which is his affair; then they will wash aft into this well, and from that you must bale it out all the time. When the seas come in, you need not be alarmed, nor will it be necessary to cry out."

"Such instructions, my friend," said the priest, scrambling into his oilskin coat, "are unnecessary to mademoiselle, who is a woman of discernment."

"But I try not to be," snapped Mademoiselle Brun. She knew which women are most popular with men.

"As for you, mademoiselle," said the boatman to Denise, "keep the boat pointed at the waves, and as each one comes to you, cut it as you would cut a cream cheese. She will jerk and pull at you, but you must not be afraid of her; and remember that the highest wave may be cut."

"That young lady is not afraid of much," muttered the abbe, settling to his oar.

They pulled slowly out to the end of the rocky promontory, upon which a ruined house still stands, and shot suddenly out into a howling wind. The first wave climbed leisurely over the weather-bow, and slopped aft to the ladies' feet; the second rose up, and smote the abbe in the back.

"Cut them, mademoiselle; cut them!" shouted the boatman.

And at intervals during that wild journey he repeated the words, unceremoniously spitting the salt water from his lips. The abbe, bending his back to the work and the waves, gave a short laugh from time to time, that had a ring in it to make Mademoiselle Brun suddenly like the man—the fighting ring of exaltation which adapts itself to any voice and any tongue. For nearly an hour they rowed in silence, while mademoiselle baled the water out, and Denise steered with steady eyes piercing the darkness.

"We are quite close to it," she said at length; for she had long been steering towards a light that flickered feebly across the broken water.

In a few moments they were alongside, and, amidst confused shouting of orders, the two ladies were half lifted, half dragged on board. The abbe followed them,

"A word with you," he said, taking Mademoiselle Brun unceremoniously by the arm, and leading her apart. "You will be met by friends on your arrival at St. Raphael to-morrow. And when you are free to do so, will you do me a favour?"

"Yes."

"Find Lory de Vasselot, wherever he may be."

"Yes," answered Mademoiselle Brun.

"And tell him that I went to the Chateau de Vasselot and found it empty."

Mademoiselle reflected for some moments.

"Yes; I will do that," she said at length.

"Thank you."

The abbe stared hard at her beneath his dripping hat for a moment, and then, turning abruptly, moved towards the gangway, where his boat lay in comparatively smooth water at the lee-side of the yacht. Denise was speaking to a man who seemed to be the captain.

Mademoiselle Brun followed the abbe.

"By the way—" she said.

Susini stopped, and looked into her face, dimly lighted by the moon, which peeped at times through riven clouds.

"Whom should you have found in the chateau?" she asked.

"Ah! that I will not tell you."

Mademoiselle Brun gave a short laugh.

"Then I shall find out. Trust a woman to find out a secret."

The abbe was already over the bulwark, so that only his dark face appeared above, with the water running off it. His eyes gleamed in the moonlight.

"And a priest to keep one," he answered. And he leapt down into the boat.



CHAPTER XVIII.

A WOMAN OF ACTION.

"Love ... gives to every power a double power Above their functions and their offices."

"Ah!" said Mademoiselle Brun, as she stepped on deck the next morning. And the contrast between the gloomy departure from Corsica and the sunny return to France was strong enough, without further comment from this woman of few words.

The yacht was approaching the little harbour of St. Raphael at half speed on a sea as blue and still as the Mediterranean of any poet's dream. The freshness of morning was in the air—the freshness of Provence, where the days are hot and the nights cool, and there are no mists between the one and the other. Almost straight ahead, the little town of Frejus (where another Corsican landed to set men by the ears) stood up in sharp outline against the dark pinewoods of Valescure, with the thin wood-smoke curling up from a hundred chimneys. To the left, the flat lands of Les Arcs half hid the distant heights of Toulon; and, to the right, headland after headland led the eye almost to the frontier of Italy along the finest coast-line in the world. Every shade of blue was on sky or sea or mountain, while the deep morning shadows were transparent and almost luminous. From the pinewoods a scent of resin swept seaward, mingled with the subtle odour of the tropic foliage near the shore. The sky was cloudless. This was indeed the smiling land of France.

Denise, who had followed mademoiselle on deck, stood still and drank it all in; for such sights and scents have a deep eloquence for the young, which older hearts can only touch from the outside, vaguely and intangibly, like the memory of a perfume.

Denise had slept well, and Mademoiselle Brun said she had slept enough for an old woman. A cheery little stewardess had brought them coffee soon after daylight, and had answered a few curt questions put to her by Mademoiselle Brun.

"Yes; the yacht was the yacht of the Baron de Melide, and the bete-noire, by the same token, of madame, who hated the sea."

And madame was at the chateau near Frejus, where Monsieur le Baron had installed her on the outbreak of the war, and would assuredly be on the pier at St. Raphael to meet them. And God only knew where Monsieur le Baron was. He had gone, it was said, to the war in some civil capacity.

As they stood on deck, Denise soon perceived the little pier where there were, even at this early hour, a few of those indefatigable Mediterranean Waltons who fish and fish and catch nothing, all through the sunny day. Presently Mademoiselle Brun caught sight of a small dot of colour which seemed to move spasmodically up and down.

"I see the parasol," she said, "of Jane de Melide. What good friends we have!"

And presently they were near enough to wave a handkerchief in answer to the Baroness de Melide's vigorous salutations. The yacht crept round the pier-head, and was soon made fast to a small white buoy. While a boat was being lowered, the baroness, in a gay Parisian dress, walked impatiently backwards and forwards, waved her parasol, and called out incoherent remarks, which Mademoiselle Brun answered by a curt gesture of the hand.

"My poor friend!" exclaimed the baroness, as she embraced Mademoiselle Brun. "My dear Denise, you are a brave woman. I have heard all about you."

And her quick, dancing eyes took in at a glance that Denise had come against her will, and Mademoiselle Brun had brought her. Of which Denise was ignorant, for the sunshine and brightness of the scene affected her and made her happy.

"Surely," she said, as they walked the length of the pier together, "the bad news has been exaggerated. The war will soon be over and we shall be happy again."

"Do not talk of it," cried the baroness. "It is a horror. I saw Lory, after Woerth, and that was enough war for me. And, figure to yourself!—I am all alone in this great house. It is a charity to come and stay with me. Lory has gone to the front. My husband, who said he loved me—where is he? Bonjour, and he is gone. He leaves me without a regret. And I, who cry my eyes out; or would cry them out if I were a fool—such as mademoiselle thinks me. Ah! I do not know what has come to all the men."

"But I do," said mademoiselle, who had seen war before.

And the baroness, looking at that still face, laughed her gay little inconsequent laugh.

A carriage was waiting for them in the shade of the trees on the market-place, its smart horses and men forming a strong contrast to the untidy town and slip-shod idlers. As usual, a game of bowls was in progress, and absorbed all the attention of the local intelligence.

"We have half an hour through the pine trees," said the baroness, settling herself energetically on the cushions. "And, do you know, I am thankful to see you. I thought you would be prevented coming."

She glanced at Denise as she spoke, and with a suddenly grave face, leant forward, and whispered—

"The news is bad—the news is bad. All this has been organized by Lory and my husband, who told me, in so many words, that they must have us where they can find us at a moment's notice. In case—ah, mon Dieu! I do not know what is going to happen to us all."

"Then are we to be moved about, like ornaments, from one safe place to another?" asked Denise, with a laugh which was not wholly spontaneous.

"I have never been treated as an ornament yet," put in Mademoiselle Brun, "and it is perhaps rather late to begin now."

Denise looked at her inquiringly.

"Yes," said the little woman, quietly. "I am going to the war—if Jane will take care of you while I am away."

"And why should not I go too?" asked Denise.

"Because you are too young and too pretty, my dear—since you ask a plain question," replied the baroness, impulsively. Then she turned towards mademoiselle. "You know," she said, "that my precious stupid is organizing a field hospital."

"I thought he would find something to do," answered mademoiselle, curtly.

"Yes," said the baroness, slowly, "yes—because when he was a boy he had for governess a certain little woman whose teaching was deeds, not words. And he is paying for it himself. And we shall all be ruined."

She spread out her rich dress, lay back in her luxurious carriage, and smiled on Mademoiselle Brun with something that was not mirth at the back of her brown eyes.

"I shall go to him," said mademoiselle. And the baroness made no reply for some moments.

"Do you know what he said?" she asked. "He said we shall want women—old ones. I know one old woman who will come!"

Mademoiselle was buttoning her cotton gloves and did not seem to hear.

"It was, of course, Lory," went on the baroness, "who encouraged him and told him how to go about it. And then he went back to the front to fight. Mon Dieu! he can fight—that Lory!"

"Where is he?" asked mademoiselle. And the baroness spread out her gloved hands.

"At the front—I cannot tell you more."

And mademoiselle did not speak again. She was essentially a woman of her word. She had undertaken to find Lory and give him that odd, inexplicable message from the abbe. She had not undertaken much in her narrow life; but she had usually accomplished, in a quiet, mouse-like way, that to which she set her hand. And now, as she drove through the smiling country, with which it was almost impossible to associate the idea of war, she was planning how she could get to the front and work there under the Baron de Melide, and find Lory de Vasselot.

"They are somewhere near a little place called Sedan," said the baroness.

And Mademoiselle Brun set out that same day for the little place called Sedan; then known vaguely as a fortress on the Belgian frontier, and now for ever written in every Frenchman's heart as the scene of one of those stupendous catastrophes to which France seems liable, and from which she alone has the power of recovery. For, whatever the history of the French may be, it has never been dull reading, and she has shown the whole world that one may carry a brave and a light heart out of the deepest tragedy.

By day and night Mademoiselle Brun, sitting upright in a dark corner of a second-class carriage, made her way northward across France. No one questioned her, and she asked no one's help. A silent little old woman assuredly attracts less attention to her comings and goings than any other human being. And on the third day mademoiselle actually reached Chalons, which many a more important traveller might at this time have failed to do. She found the town in confusion, the civilians bewildered, the soldiers sullen. No one knew what an hour might bring forth. It was not even known who was in command. The emperor was somewhere near, but no one knew where. General officers were seeking their army-corps. Private soldiers were wandering in the streets seeking food and quarters. The railway station was blocked with stores which had been hastily discharged from trucks wanted elsewhere. And it was no one's business to distribute the stores.

Mademoiselle Brun wandered from shop to shop, gathering a hundred rumours but no information. "The emperor is dying—Macmahon is wounded," a butcher told her, as he mechanically sharpened his knife at her approach, though he had not as much as a bone in his shop to sell her.

She stopped a cuirassier riding a lame horse, his own leg hastily bandaged with a piece of coloured calico.

"What regiment?" she asked.

"I have no regiment. There is nothing left. You see in me the colonel, and the majors, and the captains. I am the regiment," he answered with a laugh that made mademoiselle bite her steady lip.

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know. Can you give me a little money?"

"I can give you a franc. I have not too much myself. Where have you come from?"

"I don't know. None of us knew where we were."

He thanked her, observed that he was very hungry, and rode on. She found a night's lodging at a seed-chandler's who had no seeds to sell.

"They will not need them this year," he said. "The Prussians are riding over the corn."

The next morning the indomitable little woman went on her way towards Sedan in a forage-cart which was going to the front. She told the corporal in charge that she was attached to the Baron de Melide's field hospital and must get to her work.

"You will not like it when you get there, my brave lady," said the man, good-humouredly, making room for her.

"I shall like it better than doing nothing here," she replied.

And so they set forth through the country heavy with harvest. It was the second of September. The corn was ripe, the leaves were already turning; for it had been a dry summer, and since April hardly any rain had fallen.

It was getting late in the afternoon when they met a man in a dog-cart driving at a great pace. He pulled up when he saw them. His face was the colour of lead, his eyes were startlingly bloodshot.

"This parishioner has been badly scared," muttered the soldier who was driving Mademoiselle Brun.

"Where are you going?" asked the stranger in a high, thin voice.

"To Sedan."

"Then turn back," he cried; "Sedan is no place for a woman. It is a hell on earth. I saw it all, mon Dieu. I saw it all. I was at Bazeilles. I saw the children thrown into the windows of the burning houses. I saw the Bavarians shoot our women in the streets. I saw the troops rush into Sedan like rabbits into their holes, and then the Prussians bombarded the town. They had six hundred guns all round the town, and they fired upon that little place which was packed full like a sheep-pen. It is not war—it is butchery. What is the good God doing? What is He thinking of?"

And the man, who had the pasty face of a clerk or a commercial traveller, raised his whip to heaven in a gesture of fierce anger. Mademoiselle Brun looked at him with measuring eyes. He was almost a man at that moment. But perhaps her standard of manhood was too high.

"And is Sedan taken?" she asked quietly.

"Sedan is taken. Macmahon is wounded. The emperor is prisoner, and the whole French army has surrendered. Ninety thousand men. The Prussians had two hundred and forty thousand men. Ah! That emperor—that scoundrel!"

Mademoiselle Brun looked at him coldly, but without surprise. She had dealt with Frenchmen all her life, and probably expected that the fallen should be reviled—an unfortunate characteristic in an otherwise great national spirit.

"And the cavalry?" she asked.

"Ah!" cried the man, and again his dull eye flashed. "The cavalry were splendid. They tried to cut their way out. They passed through the Prussian cavalry and actually faced the infantry, but the fire was terrible. No man ever saw or heard anything like it. The cuirassiers were mown down like corn. The cavalry exists no longer, madame, but its name is immortal."

There was nothing poetic about Mademoiselle Brun, who listened rather coldly.

"And you," she asked, "what are you? you are assuredly a Frenchman?"

"Yes—I am a Frenchman."

"And yet your back is turned," said Mademoiselle Brun, "towards the Prussians."

"I am a writer," explained the man—"a journalist. It is my duty to go to some safe place and write of all that I have seen."

"Ah!" said Mademoiselle Brun. "Let us, my friend," she said, turning to her companion on the forage-cart, "proceed towards Sedan. We are fortunately not in the position of monsieur."



CHAPTER XIX.

THE SEARCH.

"Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop Than when we soar."

There were many who thought the war was over that rainy morning after the fall of Sedan. For events were made to follow each other quickly by those three sleepless men who moved kings and emperors and armies at their will. Bismarck, Moltke, and Roon must have slept but little—if they closed their eyes at all—between the evening of the first and the morning of the third day of September. For human foresight must have its limits, and the German leaders could hardly have dreamt, in their most optimistic moments, of the triumph that awaited them. Bismarck could hardly have foreseen that he should have to provide for an imperial prisoner. Moltke's marvellous plans of campaign could scarcely have embraced the details necessary to the immediate disposal of ninety thousand prisoners of war, with many guns and horses and much ammunition.

It was but twenty-four hours after he had left Sedan to seek, and seek in vain, the King of Prussia, that the third Napoleon—the modern man of destiny who had climbed so high and fallen so very low—set out on his journey to the Palace of Wilhelmshoehe, never to set foot on French soil again. For he was to seek a home, and finally a grave, in England, where his bones will lie till that day when France shall think fit to deposit them by those of the founder of the adventurous dynasty.

Among those who stood in the muddy street of Donchery that morning, and watched in silence the departure of the simple carriage, was Mademoiselle Brun, whose stern eyes rested for a moment on the sphinx-like face, met for an instant the dull and extinct gaze of the man who had twisted all France round his little finger.

When the cavalcade had passed by, she turned away and walked towards Sedan. The road was crowded with troops, coming and going almost in silence. Long strings of baggage-carts splashed past. Here and there an ambulance waggon of lighter build was allowed a quicker passage. Messengers rode, or hurried on foot, one way and the other; but few spoke, and a hush seemed to hang over all. There was no cheering this morning—even that was done. The rain splashed pitilessly down on these men who had won a great victory, who now hurried hither and thither, afraid of they knew not what, cowering beneath the silence of Heaven.

Mademoiselle was stopped outside the gates of Sedan.

"You can go no further!" said an under-officer of a Bavarian regiment in passable French, the first to question the coming or going of this insignificant and self-possessed woman.

"But I can stay here?" returned mademoiselle in German. In teaching, she had learnt—which is more than many teachers do.

"Yes, you can stay here," laughed the German.

And she stayed there patiently for hours in the rain and mud. It was afternoon before her reward came. No one heeded her, as, standing on an overturned gun-carriage, beneath her shabby umbrella, she watched the first detachment of nearly ten thousand Frenchmen march out of the fortress to their captivity in Germany.

"No cavalry?" she said to a bystander when the last detachment had gone.

"There is no cavalry left, ma bonne dame," replied the old man to whom she had spoken.

"No cavalry left! And Lory de Vasselot was a cuirassier. And Denise loved Lory." Mademoiselle Brun knew that, though perhaps Denise herself was scarcely aware of it. In these three thoughts mademoiselle told the whole history of Sedan as it affected her. Solferino had, for her, narrowed down to one man, fat and old at that, riding at the head of his troops on a great horse specially chosen to carry bulk. The victory that was to mar one empire and make another, years after Solferino, was summed up in three thoughts by the woman who had the courage to live frankly in her own small woman's world, who was ready to fight—as resolutely as any fought at Sedan—for Denise. She turned and went down that historic road, showing now, as ever, a steady and courageous face to the world, though all who spoke to her stabbed her with the words, "There is no cavalry left—no cavalry left, ma bonne dame."

She hovered about Donchery and Sedan, and the ruins of Bazeilles, for some days, and made sure that Lory de Vasselot had not gone, a prisoner, to Germany. The confusion in the French camp was greater than any had anticipated, and no reliable records of any sort were obtainable. Mademoiselle could not even ascertain whether Lory had fought at Sedan; but she shrewdly guessed that the mad attempt to cut a way through the German lines was such as would recommend itself to his heart. She haunted, therefore, the heights of Bazeilles, seeking among the dead one who wore the cuirassier uniform. She found, God knows, enough, but not Lory de Vasselot.

All this while she never wrote to Frejus, judging, with a deadly common sense, that no news is better than bad news. Day by day she continued her self-imposed task, on the slippery hill-sides and in the muddy valleys, until at last she passed for a peasant-woman, so bedraggled was her dress, so lined and weather-beaten her face. Her hair grew white in those days, her face greyer. She had not even enough to eat. She lay down and slept whenever she could find a roof to cover her. And always, night and day, she carried with her the burthen of that bad news of which she would not seek to relieve herself by the usual human method of telling it to another.

And one day she wandered into a church ten miles on the French side of Sedan, intending perhaps to tell her bad news to One who will always listen. But she found that this was no longer a house of prayer, for the dead and dying were lying in rows on the floor. As she entered, a tall man, coming quickly out, almost knocked her down. His arms were full of cooking utensils. He was in his shirt-sleeves: blood-stained, smoke-grimed, unshaven and unwashed. He turned to apologize, and began explaining that this was no place for a woman; but he stopped short. It was the millionaire Baron de Melide.

Mademoiselle Brun sat suddenly down on a bench near the door. She did not look at him. Indeed, she purposely looked away and bit her lip with her little fierce teeth because it would quiver. In a moment she had recovered herself.

"I have come to help you," she said.

"God knows, we want you," replied the baron—a phlegmatic man, who, nevertheless, saw the quivering lip, and turned away hastily. For he knew that mademoiselle would never forgive herself, or him, if she broke down now.

"Here," he said, with a clumsy gaiety, "will you wash these plates and dishes? You will find the pump in the cure's garden. We have nurses and doctors, but we have no one to wash up. And it is I who do it. This is my hospital. I have borrowed the building from the good God."

Mademoiselle was naturally a secretive woman. She could even be silent about her neighbours' affairs. Susini had been guided by a quick intuition, characteristic of his race, when he had confided in this Frenchwoman. She had been some hours in the baron's hospital before she even mentioned Lory's name.

"And the Count de Vasselot?" she inquired, in her usual curt form of interrogation, as they were taking a hurried and unceremonious meal in the vestry by the light of an altar candle.

The baron shook his head and gulped down his food.

"No news?" inquired Mademoiselle Brun.

"None."

They continued to eat for some minutes in silence.

"Was he at Sedan?" asked mademoiselle, at length.

"Yes," replied the baron, gravely. And then they continued their meal in silence by the light of the flickering candle.

"Have you any one looking for him?" asked mademoiselle, as she rose from the table and began to clear it.

"I have sent two of my men to do so," replied the baron, who was by nature no more expansive than his old governess. And for some days there was no mention of de Vasselot between them.

Mademoiselle found plenty of work to do besides the menial labours of which she had relieved the man who deemed himself fit for nothing more complicated than washing dishes and providing funds. She wrote letters for the wounded, and also for the dead. She had a way of looking at those who groaned unnecessarily and out of idle self-pity, which was conducive to silence, and therefore to the comfort of others. She smoothed no pillows and proffered no soft words of sympathy. But it was she who found out that the cure had a piano. She it was who took two hospital attendants to the priest's humble house and brought the instrument away. She had it placed inside the altar rails, and fought the cure afterwards in the vestry as to the heinousness of the proceeding.

"You will not play secular airs?" pleaded the old man.

"All that there is of the most secular," replied she, inexorably. "And the recording angels will, no doubt, enter it to my account—and not yours, monsieur le cure".

So Mademoiselle Brun played to the wounded all through the long afternoons until her fingers grew stiff. And the doctors said that she saved more than one fretting life. She was not a great musician, but she had a soothing, old-fashioned touch. She only played such ancient airs as she could remember. And the more she played the more she remembered. It seemed to come back to her—each day a little more. Which was odd, for the music was, as she had promised the cure, secular enough, and could not, therefore, have been inspired by her sacred surroundings within the altar rails. Though, after all, it may have been that those who recorded this sacrilege against Mademoiselle Brun, not only made a cross-entry on the credit side, but helped her memory to recall that forgotten music.

Thus the days slipped by, and little news filtered through to the quiet Ardennes village. The tide of war had rolled on. The Germans, it was said, were already halfway to Paris. And from Paris itself the tidings were well-nigh incredible. One thing alone was certain; the Bonaparte dynasty was at an end and the mighty schemes of an ambitious woman had crumbled like ashes within her hands. All the plotting of the Regency had fallen to pieces with the fall of the greatest schemer of them all, whom the Paris government fatuously attempted to hookwink. Napoleon the Third was indeed a clever man, since his own wife never knew how clever he was. So France was now a howling Republic—a Republic being a community wherein every man is not only equal to, but better than his neighbour, and may therefore shout his loudest.

No great battles followed Sedan. France had but one army left, and that was shut up in Metz, under the command of another of the Paris plotters who was a bad general and not even a good conspirator.

Poor France had again fallen into bad hands. It seemed the end of all things. And yet for Mademoiselle Brun, who loved France as well as any, all these troubles were one day dispersed by a single note of a man's voice. She was at the piano, it being afternoon, and was so used to the shuffling of the bearer's feet that she no longer turned to look when one was carried in and another, a dead one perhaps, was carried out.

She heard a laugh, however, that made her music suddenly mute. It was Lory de Vasselot who was laughing, as they carried him into the little church. He was explaining to the baron that he had heard of his hospital, and had caused himself to be carried thither as soon as he could be moved from the cottage, where he had been cared for by some peasants.

The laugh was silenced, however, at the sight of Mademoiselle Brun.

"You here, mademoiselle?" he said. "Alone, I hope," he added, wincing as the bearers set him down.

"Yes, I am alone. Denise is safe at Frejus with Jane de Melide."

"Ah!"

"And your wounds?" said Mademoiselle Brun.

"A sabre-cut on the right shoulder, a bullet through the left leg—voila tout. I was in Sedan, and we tried to get out. That is all I know, mademoiselle."

Mademoiselle stood over him with her hands crossed at her waist, looking down at him with compressed lips.

"Not dangerous?" she inquired, glancing at his bandages, which indeed were numerous enough.

"I shall be in the saddle again in three weeks, they tell me. If the war only lasts—" He gave an odd, eager laugh. "If the war only lasts—"

Then he suddenly turned white and lost consciousness.



CHAPTER XX.

WOUNDED.

"Le temps fortifle ce qu'il n'ebranle pas."

That night mademoiselle wrote to Denise at Frejus, breaking at last her long silence. That she gave the barest facts, may be safely concluded. Neither did she volunteer a thought or a conclusion. She was as discreet as she was secretive. There are some secrets which are infinitely safer in a woman's custody than in a man's. You may tell a man in confidence the amount of your income, and it will go no further; but in affairs of the heart, and not of the pocket, a woman is safer. Indeed, you may tell a woman your heart's secret, provided she keeps it where she keeps her own. And Mademoiselle Brun had only one thought night and day: the happiness of Denise. That, and a single memory—the secret, perhaps, which was such a standing joke at the school in the Rue du Cherche-Midi—made up the whole life of this obscure woman.

Two days later she gave Lory Susini's message; and de Vasselot sent for the surgeon.

"I am going," he said. "Patch me up for a journey."

The surgeon had dealt so freely with life and death that he only shrugged his shoulders.

"You cannot go alone," he said—"a man with one arm and one leg."

Mademoiselle looked from one to the other. She was willing enough that Lory should undertake this journey, for he must needs pass through Provence to get to Corsica. She did not attempt to lead events, but was content to follow and steer them from time to time.

"I am going to the south of France," she said. "The baron needs me no longer since the hospital is to be moved to Paris. I can conduct Monsieur de Vasselot—a part of the way, at all events."

And the rest arranged itself. Five days later Lory de Vasselot was lifted from the railway carriage to the Baroness de Melide's victoria at Frejus station.

"Madame's son is, no doubt, from Sedan?" said the courteous station-master, who personally attended to the wounded man.

"He is from Sedan—but he is not my son. I never had one," replied mademoiselle with composure.

She was tired, for she had hardly slept since Lory came under her care. She sat open-eyed, with that knowledge which is given to so few—the knowledge of the gradual completion of a set purpose.

They had travelled all night, and it was not yet midday when mademoiselle first saw, and pointed out to Lory, the white turret of the chateau among the pines.

The baroness was on the steps to greet them. Like many persons of a gay exterior, she had a kind heart and a quick sympathy. She often did, and said, the right thing, when cleverer people found themselves at fault. She laughed when she saw Lory lying full length across her smart carriage—laughed, despite his white cheeks and the grey weariness of mademoiselle's face. She seemed part of the sunshine and the brisk resinous air.

"Ah, my cousin," she cried, "it does the eyes good to see you! I should like to carry you up these steps."

"In three weeks," answered de Vasselot, "I will carry you down."

"His room is on the ground floor," said the baroness to mademoiselle, in an aside. "You are tired, my dear—I see it. Your room is the same as before; you must lie down this afternoon. I will take care of Lory, and Denise will—but, where is Denise? I thought she was behind me."

She paused to guide the men who were carrying de Vasselot through the broad doorway.

"Denise!" she cried without looking round, "Denise! where are you?"

Then turning, she saw Denise coming slowly down the stairs. Her face was whiter than Mademoiselle Brun's. Her eyes, clear and clever, were fixed on Lory's face as if seeking something there. There was an odd silence for a moment—such as the superstitious say, is caused by the passage of an angel among human beings—even the men carrying Lory seemed to tread softly. It was he who broke the spell.

"Ah, mademoiselle!" he said gaily, "the fortune of war, you see!"

"But it might have been so much worse," said the baroness in a whisper to Mademoiselle Brun. "Bon Dieu, it might have been so much worse!"

And at luncheon they were gay enough. For a national calamity is, after all, secondary to a family calamity. Only de Vasselot and Mademoiselle Brun had been close to war, and it was no new thing to them. Theirs was, moreover, that sudden gaiety which comes from re-action. The contrast of their present surroundings to that little hospital in a church within cannon-sound of Sedan—the quiet of this country house, the baroness, Denise herself young and grave—were sufficient to chase away the horror of the past weeks.

It was the baroness who kept the conversation alert, asking a hundred questions, and, as often as not, disbelieving the answers.

"And you assure me," she said for the hundredth time, "that my poor husband is well. That he does not miss me, I cannot of course believe with the best will in the world, though Mademoiselle Brun assert it with her gravest air. Now, tell me, how does he spend his day?"

"Mostly in washing up dishes," replied mademoiselle, looking severely at the baron's butler, whose hand happened to shake at that moment as he offered a plate. "But he is not good at it. He was ignorant of the properties of soda until I informed him."

"But there is no glory in that," protested the baroness. "It was only because he assured me that he would not run into danger, and would inevitably be made a grand commander of the Legion of Honour, that he was allowed to go. I do not see the glory in washing up dishes, my friends, I tell you frankly."

"No; but it is there," said mademoiselle.

After luncheon Lory, using his crutches, made his way laboriously to the verandah that ran the length of the southern face of the house. It was all hung with creepers, and shaded from the sun by a dense curtain of foliage. Here heliotrope grew like a vine on a trellis against the wall, and semi-tropical flowers bloomed in a bewildering confusion. A little fountain trickled sleepily near at hand, in the mossy basin of which a talkative family of frogs had their habitation.

Half asleep in a long chair, de Vasselot was already coming under the influence of this most healing air in the world, when the rustle of a skirt made him turn.

"It is only I, my poor Lory," said the baroness, looking down at him with an odd smile. "You turned so quickly. Is there anything you want—anything in my power to give you, I mean?"

"I am afraid you have parted with that already."

"To that—scullery-man, you mean. Yes, perhaps you are too late. It is so wise to ask too late, mon cousin."

She laughed gaily, and turned away towards the house. Then she stopped suddenly and came back to him.

"Seriously," she said, looking down at him with a grave face—"seriously. My prayers should always be for any woman who became your wife—you, and your soldiering. Ciel! it would kill any woman who really cared—"

She broke off and contemplated him as he lay at full length.

"And she might care—a little—that poor woman."

"She would have to care for France as well," said de Vasselot, momentarily grave at the thought of his country.

"I know," said the baroness, with a wise shake of the head. "Mon ami, I know all about that."

"I have some new newspapers from Paris," she added, going towards the house. "I will send them to you."

And it was Denise who brought the newspapers. She handed them to him in silence. Their eyes met for an instant, and both alike had that questioning look which had shone in Denise's eyes as she came downstairs. They seemed to know each other now better than they had done when they last parted at the Casa Perucca.

There was a chair near to his, and Denise sat down there as if it had been placed on purpose—as perhaps it had—by Fate. They were silent for a few moments, gathering perhaps the threads that connected one with the other. For absence does not always break such threads, and sometimes strengthens them. Then Lory spoke without looking at her.