The Smart Set/Volume 9/Issue 4/Kersalec

The Earl of Strope was an irascible old gentleman, of intimidating aspect and appalling frankness of speech, who was somewhat widely known for two reasons: because he was the grandfather of that famous beauty, Isabeau de Monsigny, and because he possessed a phenomenal bodily strength, far beyond that of ordinary men, which he preserved to the very end of his long life, and of which he was inordinately vain. He was wont to divide his time, during the latter part of his life, between Strope manor in Devonshire and Château Monsigny, which lies near Versailles; but July and August he liked to pass in a castle which he owned in Brittany, in the remotest corner of Finistère—a grim old thirteenth-century stronghold, overhanging an ever stormy sea, on the Pointe du Van.

Why any human being should have chosen to build a habitation on this gale-swept, sea-drenched fist of granite, is beyond conjecture; but there are two castles on the Pointe, with the sea crashing two hundred feet below them. And you may see them when you go, with the other tourists, from Audierne to the Pointe du Raz, to set foot upon the northwesternmost reach of Europe. They sit on their crags just to the cast of you, across that innocent-looking gulf of horror, the Baie des Trépassés, where the currents bear, each year, scores of wrecked vessels and hundreds of mangled corpses. You may even reach them in an hour or two of walking, along the cliffs and over the rocks.

The nearer one of the two—it rises from a great boss of rock beside the Baie des Trépassés—is Château Kersalec, and it belonged to Jean de Kersalec, the last marquis of the oldest house in Brittany. The other stronghold is the property of the Earl of Strope, and it sits upon the very extremity of the Pointe du Van, with the open sea before it and the great Baie de Douarnenez on its right.

Between the two castles there is a mile of open moor, with the little chapel of St. They set midway on the cliff—a mile of open moor, stone-scattered, where nothing can grow but patches of heather an inch high, and that gorse which, inland, grows waist-high and makes the most impenetrable hedge in the world. And, behind, there is naked moor also, for, in Winter and in all times of storm, the sea-foam is blown inland for miles, and covers the soil with salt, so that no tree or shrub can live.

“Aye, it is bleak,” the old earl would say, with a laugh; “you will find no bleaker spot in Europe. I dare say that is why I like it. I'm bleak, too—and a bit stormy. moreover, I like to be alone. Isabeau's chatter is a great trial to me.” And he would laugh again, for it was well known that he and his beautiful granddaughter, who had been lately married, adored each other.

But, though the earl was fond of saying that he liked to be alone, he had, from time to time, a number of guests at Château Kerval, and he amused himself greatly with their painstaking efforts to extract entertainment from rocks and gorse and seagulls.

And, too, he had fallen into the habit of walking over, of an afternoon, to Château Kersalec for an informal call and a cup of tea. He disliked the marquis, but, like most old men of his type, he was very fond of young women, the freshness and sweetness of whose girlhood were not yet past. The marquise Aurélie was much younger than her husband, not more than one- or two-and-twenty, and, besides being an extremely pretty woman, she had numberless little girlish tricks and mannerisms,which constantly reminded the earl of Isabeau de Monsigny. Further, he suspected that she was very much ennuyée, as any young woman might well be, of Château Kersalec and of all the bleak, dreary, storm-swept country; and he believed that the calls of even an old man might be a welcome diversion.

It happened, one year, that the earl was summoned to Paris, upon matters of importance, in the midst of his customary stay at the Pointe du Van, so that, when he returned, it was well along in August. He crossed the moor, on the day following his arrival, to call at Kersalec.

Now, on the landward side of the castle, facing the avenue and the gardens which the marquise and her gardeners had made to grow behind the shelter of stone walls, there is a high, paved terrace, railed about by a stone balustrade, and protected by the L which the walls make about two of its sides. The long windows and the door of a suite of rooms open upon it, and a flight of steps descends from it to the avenue.

It was here that the marquise sat much of the time when the weather was fair, quite alone, reading, or else, in the good old feudal fashion, with a maid or two near her, sewing. But the earl was surprised to see, as he came up the avenue, that there was another woman beside the tea-table with the marquise, and that the woman was unmistakably a lady. He was surprised, for de Kersalec was known as a recluse who hated to be disturbed, and who never had guests at the château.

The marquise rose, with a little cry of welcome, and came down the step, with her two hands outstretched.

“Eet is so ver', ver' good to see you aggain! Bot so ver' good!” she insisted. “Me, I 'ave been désolée all thees time, désolée! An'—an' Jean, too,” she added, hastily, “'e 'as been désolé al-so.”

The earl's grim mouth twitched a bit, at the thought of Jean's sorrow over his absence, but he took the marquise's two hands in his, and shook them up and down, delightedly, till that young person was forced to scream with pain. For the earl was always forgetting how strong he was, and breaking the things about him, quite absent-mindedly.

“Eh, what, what?” he demanded, in alarm. “What is the matter? Did I hurt you? Ah, now, I am sorry. You ought to tell me, when you see me touch anything, to have a care. I forget. I expect I am growing old.”

The marquise laughed, rubbing her crushed fingers.

“Ah, now, you are feeshing, monsieur!” said she. “An' me, I shall not bite. Bot, I shall be ver', ver' kin', jus' the same. I shall present you to my frien' w'at 'as come to Kersalec to make me less lonely, w'en monsieur is so cruel an' goes away to Paris.”

The earl took the hand which the other woman held out to him, with a puzzled frown. “I am quite certain,” said he, “that the Countess zu Ehrenstern and I have met before, but I cannot be sure where or when. It is once more evident that I am growing old.”

The Countess Varvara zu Ehrenstern was a very handsome woman, who might have been anywhere between twenty-five and thirty. She was Russian by birth, and her blue eyes were set very slightly at the Tartar angle. She had the yellow hair, the short, full mouth, and the faintly widened cheek-bones of the Slavs.

“if you are growing old, Lord Strope,” said she, “you do it amazingly well. I have seen many old men, but none of them like you. However, my memory is better than yours. We met three years ago, at a court ball in Vienna. That was while my husband was living, and he told me afterward about your lifting a great onyx-and-gold table, in the smoking-room, on a wager—a table that no one of the others could even stir.”

“Ah, yes, I remember,” said the earl, laughing. “The wager was for a thousand crowns. I bought Isabeau some little pearls with it. I, too, remember all about meeting you, now. It was the British ambassador who presented me to you and to your husband. I had not heard of your husband's death, but I knew him for a fine soldier. How well you Russians speak English, countess—absolutely without accent!”

The Marquise de Kersalec made a face over her tea-cup. “Eet is a ogly language,” she said, with dignity. “Me, I 'ate it, an' I shall not speak one word more to-day. Eef you weesh to in-clude me in your—your causerie, you shall speak French.” And she looked quite as fierce and determined as an exceedingly pretty woman, who is not fierce by nature, can look.

“Why, then,” said the old gentleman, setting down his empty cup, with a sigh, “why, then, French, if you like, marquise, though, I protest, French is little to my taste. I feel like a ballet-dancer in it—and I dance very badly, too,” he growled, with retrospective venom.

The picture of the old Earl of Strope as a ballet-dancer upset the gravity of the marquise, but she hastily gave him more tea, and avoided, with great care, the Tartar eyes of Varvara zu Ehrenstern.

“Ah!” said the earl, suddenly, after a little silence devoted to the consumption of tea and cake, “I came very near forgetting my special reason for coming over here—and for that you two ladies may lay the blame either to your own engrossing charms, or to the inroads of senility upon a mind once hale and strong. I, too, am to have a visitor. Upon my word, the Pointe du Van is becoming a social centre! We must have a casino.”

“But you used to have many visit-ors,” protested the marquise; “half-a-dozen at a time.”

The old gentleman chuckled over his tea-cup. “They never come twice, marquise,” said he. “And I have very nearly gone through the list of those I should care to ask. They come expecting the ordinary sort of seaside place—bathing, music, tables, and all that. Of course, they find none of it. There is no music save what they make themselves, and there is no bathing, because the only sand for miles is in the Baie des Trépassés”—the marquise crossed herself—“and I won't let them try to bathe there, on account of the current. So, after two or three days, they make their excuses, and leave me alone again. The last time a party was here, one of the women fell among the rocks, and broke her leg. We had a great deal of trouble hoisting her back to safety. I have sent no invitations of late. But the man who is coming to stop with me this time—I expect him in a day or two—is not looking for amusements, and he and I are very congenial. He is not in the least a fool, and that is rare among young men, to-day. He held a commission, at one time, in a cavalry regiment, but he has been in the diplomatic service for three or four years. A very close friend of his, a man for whom he cared more than most men ever care for anything, died a month or two ago, and he is much cut up over it. I asked him here to give him a sort of change. It may do him good. I should be very glad if you could help me to make it pleasant for him. Indeed, countess, it is most fortunate for me that you are here, since I am to have a young man on my hands. The marquise, being a married woman, is, you may say, out of the running, to a certain extent.”

The marquise laughed, but her face turned grave again, with a tender and very beautiful sympathy.

“We shall be glad,” said she, “but most glad, to do anything we can, here at Kersalec, to make his stay pleasant. I think I like your visitor already, Lord Strope. One who is capable of a great love for a friend must be a good man. You must bring him here very often; must he not, Varvara? Mais, tiens! you have not told us his name.”

“Eh, what?” cried the old gentleman; “what? didn't I tell you his name? Berkeley—Captain Berkeley. Robert is his first name. He is quite well known socially about the Continent, through having been in the diplomatic service. Then, too, the family is a good one. He is cousin to the Duke of Exmoor.”

Varvara zu Ehrenstern gave a quick little cry of surprise, and turned toward the marquise, but the marquise was looking away. Then, there was a silence which presently grew significant and awkward, while the old earl shifted his eyes from one to the other of the two women, frowning a bit, and working his great eyebrows up and down like a gorilla, as was his habit when puzzled or very thoughtful.

“What is it?” he demanded, after a time, in his abrupt fashion. “What is the matter? Have I said anything out of the way? Does either of you know Berkeley? What is wrong with him?”

The marquise looked up, without smiling. “No, monsieur,” said she, “neither of us knows Captain Berkeley, though I think the countess has seen him; but he bears—n'est-ce pas?—rather an ill name in some places, the name of—of—no, not marcheur—something a little above that—the name of professional lover, monsieur, the name of a man who spends his life in making women care for him—and all for amusement, a heart-breaker—is that what you call them? One who makes a woman care, and then laughs and goes away. Ah, monsieur, I cannot like, or respect, that sort of man. He seems to me almost worse than the man who carries his heartlessness further, and is condemned by everybody. When a woman's heart is broken, what matters anything else? It is very curious that Varvara and I should have been speaking of this Captain Berkeley not an hour ago. A name we saw in a paper brought his name up. It was that which made Varvara cry out.”

The earl made a little gesture of impatience. “My dear lady,” said he, “will you let an old man say that you are talking very great nonsense? In the first place, Berkeley's reputation as a heart-breaker is greatly exaggerated—such things always are. He may have had half-a-dozen love-affairs with women whose names were great enough to make the thing seem much more important than it was; but that Berkeley acted like a gentleman through them all, I have never heard questioned. Also, I have never heard that any of his affairs partook of any—any impropriety. He is a ladies' man, of a sort—that I don't deny; but he is far from being the ordinary type of ladies' man. He is not in the least a fool, as I said just now. Some men, by a peculiarity in their mental construction, seem fated to be, all their lives, storm-centres of sentiment, just as others, by a different mental peculiarity, become storm-centres of war, or politics, or a thousand other things. Berkeley is not, apparently, a sentimental man at all, but he has often been mixed up in cases of misplaced affection—either as suitor or tertium guid. And, in the next place, marquise, you will have to look far among your friends to find a man who does not deserve a worse name than Robert Berkeley bears. Berkeley's affaires du cœur have happened to be, nearly all, with very well-known women, but they have never, I believe, been such as a gentleman may not experience with untarnished honor. Few men can boast so much. You are very unjust.”

He rose to his feet, still frowning, and took up his hat and stick. “I am very sorry,” he continued, “that this should have come up, because, of course, it makes it impossible for me to bring Berkeley here. He will be a great loser.”

But the marquise, also, sprang up, and put her hands upon his arm. “Ah, no; ah, no!” she cried, with a little, penitent smile; “no; monsieur, I did not mean to say so much! I did not mean it. You shall bring him here. You must, or—or I shall come to Kerval for him. Figure to yourself! Ah, no, monsieur, I did not mean it! I do not admire that sort of man, no; I think what he does is wicked. But all men are so, yes? And, perhaps, he is not so bad as they say. Bring him to us, monsieur; bring him to us. Then, I shall know that I am forgiven.”

The earl looked toward Varvara zu Ehrenstern, and that young woman's Tartar eyes sparkled with excitement.

“I think,” said she, slowly, and she smiled, “I think I should like to know Captain Berkeley, Lord Strope. I saw him, once, in Berlin. It was at something official, but I did not meet him. Yes,” she said again, with her slow smile, “yes, I think I should like very much to meet him. He looked interesting. No, he is not a fool.”

The old earl burst suddenly into one of his great laughs, and held out his hand. “You shall meet him,” said he. “Poor Berkeley! Countess, I see the light of battle in your eyes, and I bow to the sporting instinct. It is worth bowing to. Also, my memory begins to clear.”

A swift little flash of pallor, which was gone in an instant, spread over the Russian's face, but her eyes burned into the earl's.

“What do you mean?' she asked, very low; “what do you mean?”

“Nothing, my dear lady,” answered the old gentleman, laughing still, and shaking his white head; “nothing at all. Don't begrudge an old man his little jokes—or memories.”

He turned to the marquise, and made his adieus, bowing over her hand with his fine, old-fashioned courtesy.

“You are very kind, madame,” said he, “as I knew you would be. You are as good as you are beautiful—though that is saying a great deal. Robert Berkeley is not fit to lift his eyes to you, but then, alas! no one is. We can't pick our friends here below, madame. We must take what God gives us, and love them for what is best in them—not seeing the rest. I shall bring Captain Berkeley to Kersalec. Do you be kind to him, and the countess merciful. I must be going my way.”

He went down through the gardens, stopping here and there to admire the flowers that nestled behind the protecting walls—hydrangeas and geraniums and many varieties of carnations, and the blue larkspurs—pieds d'aloucettes—which were his special fancy. Their brightness and their mingled odors seemed strangely alien, exotic, in this barren land. It seemed almost wrong to bring them here.

And so, by a little wooden door in the wall at the garden's foot, he came out upon the stone-strewn moor, and walked slowly homeward across the heather. He paused a moment before the tiny white chapel of St. They. The ever-encroaching sea had cut away the rock, which happened at this point to be soft and broken, to within a few yards of the encircling wall, and the earl thought, absently, that if the chapel were not moved soon, a few more years would see the end of it.

He went into the little stone-enclosed shrine, which stands to the westward, on the cliff's edge—the fountain of Notre Dame de St. They—where the rudely carved stone Virgin sits over a pool of stagnant water. The statue is draped in strings of trumpery copper crosses and medallions, which the pilgrim, or the pious traveler, takes away as holy souvenirs, leaving on the shelf below a few sous, or a piece of fifty centimes, or even a franc, for the support of the chapel.

And the earl, half-smiling, took one of the little medallions and a tiny cross, leaving, on the stone shelf beneath the staring Madonna, a piece of ten francs. And, after he had sat for some time on the worn curb, now quiet, now talking to himself aloud, he rose once more and took up his walk.

It was not much after six, but the sun, which, in a clear sky, should not have set till half-past seven, was already hidden, and, from the southwest, a wind had risen, keen and cold, with a rack of gray clouds. It was a storm quarter. There would be a sea to-morrow.

He turned in through the outer wall of Kerval, and, crossing the great courtyard to the castle, went at once to his study, where a servant had already made lights, and was waiting to take his master's hat and stick. And the earl sat there a long time, quite still, thinking of the marquise de Kersalec and of her curiously impossible standards for mankind.

“She has never been in love with anybody,” he said, aloud—for he refused even to consider the possibility of such a woman's loving a man like de Kersalec; “she has never been in love with anybody. She is, in most respects, a girl, with a girl's odd, fantastic dreams and ideals. Some day, she will fall in love, and then—God help her!—she will have a different set of measures. I hope she will be kind to Berkeley. He needs a bit of petting just now.”

Then, he fell to thinking of Varvara zu Ehrenstern, and he laughed again as he remembered how he had frightened her by a chance word. He enjoyed frightening people.

“I think I shall like that Russian woman very much,” he said, again aloud. “She is very handsome in some poses, and I fancy she knows rather a good deal. She is not an ingénue by any means. I think I shall like her. I wonder”—and he laughed once more—“how she and Robert Berkeley will get on. She certainly had a warlike look in her eye. At any rate, she will meet her match, and so will he. It might be entertaining to watch them, I should think—very entertaining. Oh, we shall have a bit of interest at the Pointe du Van, after all.” And he went up-stairs, smiling with a certain grim amusement, to dress for his lonely dinner.

II

Captain Berkeley reached Kerval on the second day after this. He came from Paris, through Rennes to Quimper, and from Quimper to Audierne by Douarnenez. And this latter part of the journey took him through a country new and strange to him. He had traveled much, and he was not easily impressed, or even interested, but this alien land kept his eyes at the window of his carriage. There were great stretches of stony moorland, where it seemed that nothing could thrive but heather. And the hills, too, were red with heather. There were stubble fields where the grain stood in sheaves ready for harvest, and there were patches of cabbages, and squares of that pride of Brittany, the blé noir, white as snow. There were pine-trees and, sometimes, oak; and, everywhere, the thorny gorse—gorse growing low and close on the hillsides, gorse growing thick and high in acres on the moors, and gorse crowning the hedges of stone and earth; for it is with this impenetrable gorse that the granite of Brittany is clothed.

There were women in great, white linen coifs, looped and bizarre—brown-faced women, with light hair and blue eyes and wide cheek-bones. Some of them were beautiful. And there were men with shaven faces and keen eyes, men wearing queer jackets, fine with gold braid, and low, wide-brimmed hats with a velvet ribbon hanging down behind.

Berkeley had among his things a book, which he had meant to read; but, when he changed trains at Douarnenez, he found its leaves still uncut.

The earl met him with a trap at Audierne, and drove him ten miles or more, out to the Pointe, through queer little stone villages, and past ancient crosses of granite, monuments which stood aloft to bless a four corners, storm-beaten and moss-grown, each bearing on high a twisted figure of agony, each inscribed alike at its base, “O—Crux—Ave—Spes—Unica.”

They came, at last, to a gray old castle, which hung over a scarred cliff, two hundred feet and more above snarling breakers, a castle stern and unhandsome of outline, built out of the granite of Brittany to breast Brittany's storms.

Servants came to take the horses, and to carry in the guest's luggage—dark-faced men, with great, brooding eyes, and wearing the same odd dress that Berkeley had noticed before.

“For Frenchmen,” said he to the earl, “these people look as un-French as any one could imagine., Neither the men nor the women have anything Latin about their faces.”

“French?” returned the old gentleman, with a laugh. “They are no more French than you or I, in spite of the fact that they live in France. The Bretons are the purest Celts alive. They are own brothers to the Welsh, and cousins to the Irish and Scotch. There are over a million of them in Finistère and Morbihan who do not even understand French.”

The two crossed the paved courtyard, and passed through many suites of rooms, stone-arched and stone-walled, up and down flights of worn steps—for the castle was built on the slope of the cliff, so that no two of the rooms seemed on the same level—and so out upon an open balcony above the sea.

The view was grand beyond words. Below them, points of rock thrust out into the sea, like the fingers of a giant hand, and over them the waves broke in a smother of foam that dashed fifty feet and more up the cliff side, and snarled and fell back again. There was but a moderate wind, and the sea was not rough.

“If there were anything of a sea, we could not stand here,” explained the earl. “The foam blows well over the turrets of the castle, in a storm. We often find mussel-shells and seaweed here on the balcony, after a blow; and the balcony is a good two hundred feet above high water. That lighthouse out yonder on the rock,” he went on, “is the Tévennec. One sees eight, or ten, lights from here at night. This is the Baie de Douarnenez, here at the right, and the long point to the left, with the signal station, is the Pointe du Raz. Tourists go there a good bit, to see the storms. And the castle yonder is Château Kersalec. The Marquis and Marquise de Kersalec live there.”

“Ah, you have neighbors, then!” said Berkeley. “De Kersalec? The name is not French.”

“No, they're Bretons right enough,” explained the old gentleman, and very proud of it, too. The family has lived here for many centuries. It is one of the oldest titles in France. indeed—” he paused a moment to laugh—“indeed, de Kersalec claims direct descent from the Roi d'Is.”

Young Berkeley made a little exclamation of amused astonishment. “The King of Is?” he cried. “But, my word, there never was any Is! It is a legend, a fable. No one believes that such a city ever really existed.”

“That is as you like it,” said the earl, still laughing. “There are plenty of people to agree with you. As for me, I confess I have lived here long enough to take the city of Is half-way seriously. I dare say, one breathes in superstition with the air in Brittany. At any rate, there is no doubt that a great city was destroyed hereabouts, in the middle of the sixth century, by an incursion of the sea. Whether or not the city was la ville d'Is, and whether or not it was destroyed for its sins, as the tale goes, you must decide for yourself. You can't shake the belief of the Bretons that such a city existed right down here, where the Baie de Douarnenez lies to-day, and that the king escaped to the mountain Menez-Hom yonder, and died later at Landévennec.”

Young Berkeley looked down at the sea which covered the palaces of is, and shook an argumentative head. “It is a pretty tale,” said he; “many of the Celtic legends are. But for a sane man to claim descent from a mythical king seems bizarre. He must be a strange sort.”

“De Kersalec is a strange sort,” agreed the earl. “The few who know him think him a bit touched. That is as may be. At any rate, he is an unneighborly beggar; shuts himself up in his library most of the time. He is writing a book about his illustrious ancestor and the city of Is. Claims to have a lot of family records that are going to clear the whole mystery, and all that sort of thing. He is a genuine Breton, soaked in superstition, a dreamer, a mystic and a child. He has no sense of humor, at all.”

“You said there was a marquise,” suggested Berkeley.

“There is,” said the old gentleman, “and she is a child, too, but there are few lovelier women alive. She reminds me very strongly, at times, of Isabeau de Monsigny. She has asked me to take you over there, to Kersalec. By the way, she has a visitor at present, a young widow, Russian by birth, German by marriage. I think you two should get on famously. She is a very handsome woman. Her name is Varvara zu Ehrenstern.”

Young Berkeley looked puzzled. “I have heard of her, somewhere,” said he, thoughtfully, “but when or how I cannot imagine. At any rate, I shall be very glad to call at Château Kersalec. It sounds an interesting household.”

Then, for a long time, he was quite silent, leaning upon his arms over the gray stone balustrade, where pale-green sea-moss clung, and staring down into the driven sea. And the Earl of Strope, silent also, watched him, thinking how great a change had come over him during the past six months. He was a young man, as the earl had said to the ladies at Kersalec, between thirty and thirty-five, but he looked older, for the circles under his eyes had deepened, and all the lines of his strong, lean face seemed more plainly marked. He had a very tired and careworn look, as if his interest in things had ceased. He was not a handsome man; in so far as beauty of feature goes, he was rather ugly. But, on first seeing him, one looked at him for a long time, and looked at him again, and found his face a curiously interesting study; and one wondered what lay hidden behind his strangely quiet eyes and unchanging immobility of expression. His figure was lean and tall, with wide shoulders, and movements that suggested great bodily strength, though he was, in reality, no stronger than most men of athletic tastes. He had the Saxon coloring of eyes and hair; but his skin was tanned and weather-beaten to a copper brown.

As the earl watched him, noting how he had grown older and quieter and, somehow, a little bitter, the old nobleman wondered if the loss of one friend, however dear, could so wholly alter a man.

After a time, young Berkeley straightened himself, and turned toward his companion, with a little sigh. “That is very fine down there,” he said, sweeping a hand outward to the sea. “There's something immeasurably big and powerful and resistless about it, that—that does a chap good. It was very jolly of you to ask me here. I think I should be another man in a week, if I could just sit here and have that sea banging away all about me. Poor old Reverley would have liked it. Ah, yes, he'd have been very keen on it!”

He turned seaward again, frowning out at the strong, fresh wind. “It—rests a chap, somehow,” said he, slowly. “Eh, what? it—it smoothes down his nerves. It must be very fine to be like you, sir, quite without nerves. I used not to have any; but, lately, I—they've got hold of me, just a bit.”

“Ah,” said the old gentleman, “that is due to poor Reverley's death. That took it out of you very badly, I know.”

“Yes, oh, yes,” said Berkeley, nodding seaward; “yes, that took it out of me. We were rather more than ordinary pals, we two. And, then—well, I suppose the general futility of things hits every chap in the face now and again. I've led a precious-useless, precious-foolish sort of existence, you know. I've never done anything worth while, that I can remember, and I've brought suffering, quite needlessly, to several people. It has all been coming home to roost—like the curses—of late. I am not particularly pleased with myself.”

But the Earl of Strope clapped a great hand upon the other's shoulder, and shook him. “Nonsense, man!” he cried, in his gruff voice; “nonsense! You've an attack of nerves, and that is all. We shall give you a change here—all the sea you care to sit and look at—we've plenty of sea. And, to-morrow, I mean to take you over to Kersalec, by way of variety. Nonsense! We shall have you your old self again, in a week. And say no more about never having done anything worth while; or, at least, say it to some one else, for I know too well what you have done.”

Young Berkeley swung about, with a laugh. “Did you think I was going to have a go of nerves, right here on your hands, sir?” He cried. “Not I! And, further, I think your cure has already begun. To-morrow, then, we go to Château Kersalec. You must tell me more about your handsome Russian with the German name. I shall try to cut you out. By Jove! I feel a prophetic tug at the heart-strings already, and before I've seen her! Alas, my heart-strings have felt so many tugs! And, after all, she probably won't fancy me, at all. I do not, as a rule, attract women. Shall we dress for dinner, sir?”

III

“Good afternoon, countess,” said the Earl of Strope. “You appear to be reigning alone, for the moment. May I come up? I have brought Captain Berkeley with me, according to instructions. He is unworthy of your esteem, but I trust you will be kind to him—and, above all, merciful—for my sake.

“Captain Berkeley, the Countess zu Ehrenstern permits me to do you the honor of presenting you to her. But where is the hostess?” the earl continued. “I trust she did not lock herself into a tower at our approach.”

“Ah, poor Aurélie!” cried the countess. “She is ill, Lord Strope. No, really and truly ill,” she laughed, in answer to the earl's look. “She caught cold the other evening, from sitting out here on the terrace too long after the sun went down, and, in consequence, she has a fever. No, it is nothing of importance, une affaire de deux ou trois jours, but I am keeping her in bed. Shall I give you some tea? It is Russian tea, to-day, out of my own box and my own samovar, and you shall have no sugar or milk in it—just a slice of lemon.”

The earl made a face of frank distaste. “They tried, one Winter in Petersburg, to make me like Russian tea,” said he, “but absolutely without success. I shall retreat in good order. I have my trap and a groom at the foot of the avenue, and, if you will allow it, I shall leave this young man alone and unprotected in your hands. I have to go in to Audierne; they wish to see me at the mairie—heaven knows why. No, I won't have any tea, thank you, not even the Christian sort. I must be off at once. Will you give my respects and my heartiest wishes for an early recovery to the marquise?”

He went down the long avenue toward the cast gate, and the other two stood by the balustrade of the terrace, watching him.

“What a splendid old man!” said the Countess zu Ehrenstern, “and what an extraordinary one! I doubt if there is another like him in the world. One would know how strong he is, merely to see him walk.” Indeed, the earl did not walk like an old man, though at this time he must have been two- or three-and-eighty; but as all very strong men walk, with a sinuous, animal grace, swinging his great shoulders with the slightest possible swagger.

“They say,” the countess went on, “that he has a most irascible temper, and flies into dreadful rages all in a moment; but I have seen no signs of it as yet.”

“You probably will,” laughed young Berkeley. “He really has an abominable temper, but I fancy his rages are more pretense than reality, half of the time. He loves to frighten people.”

Varvara zu Ehrenstern took a quick breath. “He frightened me the other day,” said she, “by suggesting that he knew about a certain—a certain bit of—history.”

If Berkeley had been carefully watching, at just this moment, he might have noticed that the countess's spoon halted, for an instant, halfway to her lips, and that her eyes did not leave his face. It might have occurred to him that she wished to discover whether or not the earl had said anything to him about the matter. But young Berkeley's face expressed nothing but a polite interest, and she drew a little sigh of relief.

“Your cup is empty,” she continued. “Will you have Russian tea this time, or 'Christian' tea?”

“Russian, thanks,” said Berkeley. “I happen to be fond of it. I have lived about on the Continent so much that I am fond of all sorts of things not in the least English.”

“Ah, yes,” said she; “you have been about a great deal, have you not? You see, I have heard of you for a long time, though we never managed to meet. We have many friends in common, I think. But how does it happen that you were willing to come out here to Finistère, and bury yourself in the gorse and heather? You have been always such an attaché of courts and smart watering-places! I don't understand.”

“Why, madame,” said Captain Berkeley, bowing, “my coming I had thought a whim, following upon Lord Strope's invitation; but, now, I know it for an undeserved dispensation of Providence. I shall take an early opportunity to express my gratitude to Providence.”

The countess leaned back in her chair of osier, clapping her hands, in dumb show. “Ça commence!” she cried, in a delighted tone. And Captain Berkeley, making field-glasses of his hands, gravely regarded the distant moor, as one might watch a racing course.

“They're off!” said he.

“It was a prompt start,” murmured the Countess zu Ehrenstern, “such a very prompt start! Sometimes, one wastes such a lot of time in—in——”

“Jockeying,” prompted Captain Berkeley, surreptitiously slipping a lump of sugar into his tea.

“Jockeying—precisely,” she agreed.

“I was taught, very early in life,” said Captain Berkeley, “to emulate the little busy bee. Most of the maxims in my copy-books vaunted the folly of wasting time. One of them went, 'Lost: one golden Hour, set with sixty diamond Minutes.” I do not think I was an uncommonly avaricious child, but that line made a great impression upon me.”

And, inwardly, he was saying, “No, when you are looking straight at one, your face is a trifle too broad and square, especially across the cheek-bones; but, turned away, ever so little, it is very fine. You just escape being a beauty.”

“Yes,” said the countess, nodding, “it is too broad across the cheek-bones. That is because I am Russian, you know. It is the nose and chin that make it better in three-quarter.”

Captain Berkeley gasped slightly, and then broke into an appreciative laugh. “Either you are a mind-reader,” said he, “or I was very stupid in staring at you. I expect it was the latter. I am frequently more stupid than you would think any human being could be. I have mental lapses. Still, this time there was some excuse. You must be rather used to having people stare at you, countess—and it is really very beautiful, either in three-quarters, or profile. One would like to be a painter chap.”

“I am very glad that one isn't,” said the Russian. “I would rather be looked at than painted. Usually, I am careful not to turn my face full toward any one oftener than is necessary. I look at them a bit sidewise—so—like a parrot. isn't that better?”

“It is absurd,” declared young Berkeley, “and, if you are going to poke fun at me, I sha'n't play. I told you I was stupid. I can't keep up.”

“Lord Strope,” observed the countess, “particularly mentioned the fact, in speaking of you the other day, that you were by no means a fool. You don't look a fool, either, Captain Berkeley. Are you quite, quite certain that you are stupid?”

“my word!” cried Berkeley, in horror, “has the earl been talking about me to you? I'm done for, then—if he told the truth.”

“Ah, captain,” said she, “you come into battle with one arm tied behind you. You're handicapped in advance by your reputation. No, the earl spoke only good of you, but your fame is abroad.”

“My fame for what?” he demanded.

“For gallantry, sir,” said she, “for gallantry in excess—oh, in excess!”

“Why, madame, dear madame,” he cried, “is gallantry then become a sin? Surely not.”

“Why, no, captain,” said she, laughing, very gently; “au contraire, gallantry is a virtue. But, in excess, very much in excess, most virtues become sins. And the Church, captain, bids us avoid communication with sinners, lest we become of like feather. They say, my lord, that, for your sport, you love to play at hearts—and, maybe, break the same.”

“They lie, my lady,” said Captain Berkeley.

“They say, mon capitaine,” she went on, “you have a tongue that bewitches, and eyes that plead so well a woman must listen to you, whether she will or no. They say that, as a woman values her peace of mind, she should cover her ears, and shut her eyes, when you are near.”

“They lie, my lady,” said Captain Berkeley, again. “They lie most madly—if, indeed, any one ever has said such things.”

“And a woman, no less than a man,” said the Countess zu Ehrenstern, leaning upon her elbows and looking at her distorted reflection in the brass of the samovar, “a woman, no less than a man, loves her peace of mind, sir. And yet, poor, silly thing, she loves, no less than a man, to set it in the path where danger walks, being by nature curious and venturesome. You have a proverb, you English, which says that a burnt child shuns the fire. But a burnt woman, my lord, puts out a hand to see if the second fire will burn like the first, being by nature curious and venturesome.”

She looked up at the man sidewise, with a slow, whimsical smile. “How does the fire feel when it is burning the child—and the woman, captain?” she asked.

“I cannot tell you, madame,” answered Captain Berkeley, “but I could tell you, had I the mind, how the child feels.”

“Nay, but that I know,” said she; and, for a moment, a little shade crossed her face.

A serving-maid, fair, fresh-cheeked and astonishingly coiffed, came out upon the terrace, to take away the tea-things. In everything but that expression which makes individuality, she might have been the sister of Varvara zu Ehrenstern. There was the same slight upward tilt to the eyes, the same breadth of check-bone, the same nose and mouth and chin.

The countess smiled as she saw young Berkeley looking from one to the other. “We are much of the same type, Liçzenn and I, are we not?” she asked. “The Slavs and the Bretons bear a strong resemblance to one another, physically—and in other ways, too; the women in particular. I feel quite chez moi, here, quite among my own people. Perhaps, it is the likeness of temperament more than anything else. We are mystics, both.”

“I trust you don't go in for the Breton mysticism,” said he. “It seems rather forced and theatrical in this age—all their odd tales of the ville d'Is and the rest.”

“Ah, but I do go in for them,” said she. “Many of the tales, that seem fantastic to you, are history, captain. Of course, many of them are not, but the ville d'Is as surely lay out there where the sea lies now, as Paris stands over the Seine. They are a very ancient people, these Bretons, and they were a very great people, once; but they have sat over the ruins of Is, whispering of past glories, and dreaming of the things their fathers did, while the modern world marched by and left them in the twilight, alone. Ah, you should get the marquis to tell you tales. They say he is a little mad, but I think not. He is a strange man—I do not pretend to understand him—and his dreams have made him blind and deaf to the world about him, but I do not think he is mad. I think that he holds himself aloof, because no one understands him or the great work he is doing. Ah, but all this is of no interest to you, is it? I must persuade the marquis to convert you.”

She leaned back in her chair, clasping her hands over one knee, and Berkeley's eye was caught by the flash of one of the rings she wore.

“That is a very curious ring,” said he. “May I look at it? I think I have never before seen a sapphire engraved like a signet.”

The countess made as if she would withdraw her hand; then, she held it out for him to take. The ring was set with one very large octagonal sapphire, upon which a coat of arms was engraved, exquisitely.

“But these,” cried Captain Berkeley, looking up in sudden astonishment, “these are the royal arms of—of a European kingdom. It is a royal signet ring! How did you come by— Wait! wait a moment; let me think.” He stared at her for a little space, brows drawn together as if he were trying to recall something which had, for an instant, been at the threshold of his mind. Then, he shook his head. The Countess zu Ehrenstern drew a breath a bit longer than common.

I beg your pardon,” said Berkeley. “For a moment, I thought I recalled something about the king whose arms are on that ring, but it has escaped me. Of course, I did not mean to ask how you happened upon it. It is very handsome, is it not?”

“Yes,” returned the woman, indifferently; “yes, it is handsome. it was given to—to a member of my family, by the king.”

“As a matter of fact,” said he, “I suspect it was not so much the ring that caught my eye as the hand it ornaments. You have not a Russian hand, madame. Most Russians have ugly hands.”

But the Russian shut her eyes, and held both hands over her ears.

“It is my only safety, sir,” said she.

“Why, then, madame,” he cried, “rather than imperil you longer, I will go—most unwillingly. indeed, I have stayed a scandalous time for a first call. You make me forget my manners—among other things.”

“Among other things?” she asked, looking down upon him where he stood a step below her. “What things, then?”

“Why,” said he, laughing a little, “why, that fire burns, countess, and that I'm but a child who should remember the proverb.”

The countess dropped her hands to her sides, and bent her head toward him. “See!” said she. “I shall use no more tricks with you, my captain, but look you full in the eyes, so that you may see the worst of me, and so be in no danger of scorching.”

Whether it was some curious effect of the pose in which she stood—a little above him, at the top of the steps—or that the type had, in the hour, grown upon his fancy, he could not have said, but she seemed all at once wonderfully splendid and queenly, and lovely beyond words, so that he threw back his head with a quick jerk, looking up at her, and she heard the breath hiss between his lips. And he cried out, just above a whisper, “Upon my soul, madame, but you are very beautiful!”

A few moments later, the Countess zu Ehrenstern, with cheeks slightly flushed, mounted to a chamber on one of the upper stories of the château.

Some one in a very grand and ornate bed, some one in a tumbled surge of lace and fine linen, sat up hurriedly, and with some irritability, as if from long and impatient waiting.

“Well,” demanded the de Kersalec, “well, has he gone, Varvara?”

“Yes, he has gone,” said the Russian, looking out of a window; “oh, yes, he has gone.”

“He stayed a shocking time!” observed the marquise. “And alone, too. I think it was very bad taste. Oh, I know that the earl went away—I asked Liçzenn,” she said, defiantly. “What is he like?” she continued. “Heavens! must I drag everything out of you? And did you start well? Are you going to succeed? Ah, to punish him, once, well; to make him suffer as he has made all those women suffer! Varvara, mignonne, you must not fail! You must make him care! We shall do it, easily enough, you and I—I to plan, and you to carry out the plans. The monster!”

The Countess zu Ehrenstern sat down upon the edge of the great bed, and, taking the lace-enveloped figure into her arms, embraced it with some violence. “You vicious little cat!” she laughed. “You are quite as bad as he is; indeed, I dare say, worse. I never heard of such malevolence.”

“I want him to suffer, just once, as he has made those women suffer,” insisted the cat, “I dare say I am very uncharitable, Varvara chérie, but I do so despise that sort of man. It is all very well for the earl—the old dear!—to excuse him, but the man is no less monstrous. What is he like, Varvara? You've told me nothing of what he is like.”

The countess rose and went once more to the window, where she stood looking out. “He seemed,” said she, not turning about, “he seemed not a bad sort of man. He seemed—rather fine and—strong, and all that. Perhaps, we have been misjudging him. He looked, rather, as if he himself had suffered.”

IV

“What are you going to do this morning?” inquired the old earl at breakfast. “I shall be obliged to stop at home, myself, for that master mason is coming out from Douarnenez, to see about the addition to the stables. You might help me quarrel with him if you like, and if you have any taste in stables. Or, you can take a trap, and drive about. That might be amusing—as a change from looking at the sea. I should be ashamed to look the sea in the face again, if I spent as much time staring at it as you do. Will you have the trap?”

“Why, thanks very much,” said Captain Berkeley. “To tell the truth, I was thinking of just—well, running over to Kersalec, for a few moments—to inquire after the marquise, you know,” he added, hastily. “She might be worse. I don't think it is civil of us to seem to pay no attention to her illness.”

“But you have been at Kersalec,” objected the old gentleman, “every day for four days. By now, you ought to be fairly well posted on the marquise's condition.”

“She might be worse, you know,” repeated young Berkeley, argumentatively. “I don't think you are half civil about her. I have to do all the inquiring, and I send her wholly fictitious messages of condolence from you, each day.”

“Ah, well,” said the other, “if you feel that I have not done my share, I will go over there this morning in your place, and let the mason wait.”

“Oh, no, no; by no means!” cried Berkeley, with some haste. “Don't let me throw you out. I don't at all mind going.”

The earl burst into one of his roars of gusty laughter. “Don't mind going!” he echoed; “I should fancy not! It would be difficult to keep you away. She is a very fine woman, I believe, the Countess zu Ehrenstern,” he continued, thoughtfully, after a time. “I have taken a liking to her, an extraordinary liking—for me. She is decidedly handsome, she is young, and she has many more qualities of mind than the average woman, even the woman of her class. I must admit that I should have imagined a man of your age and experience would fancy the ingénue type, rather than the type that Varvara zu Ehrenstern represents. As a man gets on in his thirties, and tires a bit of the femme du monde, he is apt to come back to the ingénue, and eventually to marry her. It is her freshness, I expect, that draws him. But I am not altogether sure that this is wise. The countess is certainly no ingénue. She has been married, and she has lived at three different courts, and seen the life there, much of which is not all it should be. I fancy she has had her flirtations, and played her part in the great game, but I think she is the better for it. When one comes to my age, he looks with a tolerant eye upon many things that younger people make a tragic fuss about, because he sees that, in the whole of a lifetime, they are really very unimportant incidents. She is an extremely fine young woman. She interests me.”

“I think,” said the younger man, “that she must needs interest any one with whom she comes in contact. She is, as you say, very handsome; at times, she is beautiful. But, above all, she has a curious amount of that quality we call—for want of a fit name—magnetism. She's quite unlike most other women. Yes, she interests me, too. I cannot in the least make her out, but she interests me.”

The Countess zu Ehrenstern was in the little garden, which shrank for shelter behind the walls of Kersalec. She held a large atomizer, by means of which she was spraying the hydrangeas with a noxious liquid warranted to destroy insects. She was also smoking a cigarette, a large and plump one made for the comfort of the adult male. This she hurriedly threw behind her, at the sound of a step on the gravel path.

But Captain Berkeley laughed. “Why don't you go on smoking?” said he; “I won't tell any one.”

“I didn't want you to know that I—I used them,”. she confessed. “Englishmen do not approve, do they?”

“Oh, dear lady,” he cried, “how many times must I tell you that I have no British prejudices, at all? One of the most charming women I ever knew was Spanish, and she smoked cheroots—huge ones. I should not mind if you smoked a pipe.”

“You are really a very great comfort,” said the countess, with a relieved sigh. “You and the earl are impossible to disconcert. You take everything as a matter of course. Still, I think I am sorry you saw me smoking that cigarette. It makes the very littlest bit of difference, somehow. A man might be quite willing to see his sister smoke cigarettes, and drink brandy-and-soda, now and then, but——”

“Not the other chap's sister,” said Captain Berkeley.

“Precisely,” said she; “not the other chap's sister. Did you come over to see me, or to ask after the marquise?”

“I came to ask after the marquise,” said he.

“Well, she is very much better, thank you,” said the Countess zu Ehrenstern. “She hopes to be about again in a day or so. I shall tell her that you called. Good-bye.”

Captain Berkeley sat down on a garden seat, and laughed. “Oh, I don't know,” he objected. “must I go this very moment—and after walking a whole mile, too? Could you be so heartless?”

“You remind me forcibly,” criticized Varvara zu Ehrenstern, “of the convivial gentleman who is always firmly convinced that every one in the room but himself is intoxicated.”

“If you are trying to insinuate,” said he, “that I am heartless, you'd best give it up, for I am nothing of the sort. I have been having a great deal of trouble with my heart, very lately,” he complained; “palpitation and things. I don't know what to do about it.”

“Don't you?” she inquired, looking at him out of the corner of her eyes. “Is there nothing you could take for it?”

Captain Berkeley regarded her for some moments. “Yes,” said he, at last; “oh, yes.”

“Well?” questioned the countess, after another short pause.

But Berkeley shook his head, laughing. “I'm afraid,” said he; “downright afraid. You really deserve it, you know, for your sins, but I am afraid. I have always been afraid of women.”

The Countess zu Ehrenstern laughed, rather shortly. “So I have often heard,” she assented. “You have a reputation for timidity.”

She walked back and forth among the rows of flowers, smiling to herself, but frowning while she smiled, as if something puzzled her. Then, after a little, she faced him over a great, bluish-pink hydrangea.

“Each time I see you,” said she, “I am less and less able to make you out, and this annoys me. You do very curious things, sometimes—or leave undone very natural things. You are not in the least like any other man I ever knew.”

But he shook his head at her, laughing again. “Of course, I don't pretend to make you out,” said he, “or any other woman, either; but I should like to know just why you have seen fit to flatter me so grossly. It is generally admitted that the stupidest woman alive can do much as she pleases with the cleverest man; but that it takes more than a clever man to understand any woman. You heap your flattery high, dear lady; you must want something.”

“No,” said she, still facing him over the hydrangea, “no, I don't want anything. I am going to make a confession of sin.”

“My word!” cried Captain Berkeley, uneasily. “Is it fit for my young ears, madame? I begin to tremble with apprehension.”

But she would not smile; she only faced him, frowning slightly.

“When Lord Strope told me that you were coming here,” said she, “the marquise and I chanced to have been talking about you, and to have been expressing opinions of your career of—gallantry, which were—were far from flattering to you. Then, when we learned that you were to be here, that we were to see you often, the marquise and I—so strongly did we disapprove of the type of man we believed you to represent—determined that we would try to punish you, to make you suffer as you had made those women suffer who had loved you. I was to try to make you fall in love with me, and then—then laugh at you. That is my confession. I make it because I have begun to think that you are not at all the sort of man we were led to believe, and because I—why, I wanted to be, at last, on an—honest footing—do you see what I mean?—because I did not want to go on with the sham.”

Berkeley looked up at her, with narrowed, quizzical eyes and a little smile of amusement.

“Yes, oh, yes,” said he, “I see what you mean; of course, I see what you mean—the obvious part of it, at least. There are still two or three things that I don't quite understand—at least two or three things. I rather think,” he went on, more gravely, “I rather think that it was very jolly of you to own up.” He rose from his seat, and came to her side of the hydrangea, holding out his hand. “it was very jolly of you to do it,” he repeated, “and to want to.”

He stood for a moment, holding her hand, and smiling down upon the sapphire ring that bore a king's arms; and the countess looked away, over the beds and borders of flowers, breathing, so it seemed, a bit quickly.

“I wonder,” said he, aloud, but as if he were speaking to himself, “I wonder just why you wanted to own up; I wonder.”

“I told you,” said the countess, still looking away over the flowers, “some of the reasons why. If there chance to be other reasons—I will not tell them to you.”

“I wonder,” he repeated, and he laughed again. “What a curious sort of person you two seem to have thought me,” he went on, “you and the marquise—a sort of male vampire, a Bluebeard who never got to the altar! I expect the marquise thinks me so still. But you, countess—” he paused a moment, smiling, and touched the king's ring with a thoughtful finger—“you've been converted. Will you tell me the truth about something? Will you tell me——?”

The Countess zu Ehrenstern drew back her hand, and turned away. “The marquis is coming out on the terrace,” she said.

A man had come out through one of the long windows that opened upon the terrace, and was standing by the balustrade, looking down toward the garden. When he saw the two there among the flowers, he waved a hand to them, and came down the steps and the winding gravel path.

He was a man of middle height, very slightly made, and he walked with a slight stoop of the shoulders, as men of the scholarly habit are apt to walk. He had the scholar's pallor, also, as if he spent little time in the open air. His face was thin and drawn, and the black hair of his mustache, and of the tuft of chin beard which he wore, was very sparse. He had features of great delicacy, almost womanish, and his eyes were preternaturally large and of a quite indescribable, brooding cloudiness, the eyes which Berkeley had already seen in so many of the Breton men, eyes that dreamed of things very far away.

“This is Captain Berkeley, of course,” he said, in French, holding out his hand. “I owe you a thousand apologies, Captain Berkeley, for not having welcomed you sooner to Château Kersalec. It is an unpardonable rudeness toward you and toward monsieur the earl, but I am so deeply engrossed in a work of importance that it is only now and then I come to the surface, as it were, and see the world about me. It is very unfortunate that neither the marquise nor I should have been able to greet you. However, the marquise, I hear, is very nearly herself again. I am sure the countess will explain to you how absorbed I am in my work.” His great eyes turned with confidence upon the Countess zu Ehrenstern.

“I have been telling Captain Berkeley,” said she, “that we must persuade you to take him in hand on the subject of the Breton history and legend. He is insultingly skeptical. He doubts even the existence of the ville d'Is.”

The Breton's eyes rested upon the other man with mild wonder. “Doubts the existence of Is?” he repeated, as if speaking to himself. Then, he shook his head, and sighed. “There are many, alas! who doubt it, sir,” he said, gently, “though fewer now than formerly. It must be my part to convince them, as I alone can do.” He looked at the younger man for a moment, with narrowed eyes, as if he were attempting to read him, to judge his worth.

“If it would interest you, Captain Berkeley,” said he, at last, “I should be glad to show you some documents, certain plans and maps, and to tell you something of the city that lay—that lies out yonder under the sea. If you would care to come, on any day, to my study, it would give me much pleasure,.”

“Why, you are kind, sir!” cried young Berkeley. “It would interest me greatly, though, I confess, I should be a most stupid listener, knowing nothing, as I do, of the Breton legends. If I may, I shall come very soon.”

“Whenever you wish,” said the Marquis de Kersalec.

They had moved, as they talked, a little way along the path that crossed the garden, and had come to a place where the high protecting wall was cut down to the level of a man's breast. Over its top, one saw the unresting waves of the Baie des Trépassés, and the long Pointe du Raz beyond, its signal station white under the noon sun.

The Marquis de Kersalec leaned upon the wall's coping, and turned his face to the flashing sea. “There was the centre of the greatest city in the north, Captain Berkeley,” said he, in a low voice. “The palaces and the cathedral once stood where the Baie des Trépassés lies now.” A look of sadness and of unspeakable longing, too real to seem foolish or bizarre, overspread his face, and hollowed his eyes. “If only Is might wake from her sleep!” he murmured.

“And her mass be finished,” supplemented Varvara zu Ehrenstern.

“Who knows?” said the Breton, sighing; and he turned again to the sunlit sea.

“I must be going on,” said Berkeley. “It grows late, and I must not keep the earl waiting for his déjeuner. He grows dangerous if withheld too long from food. I shall take an early advantage of your offer, sir, to learn something of Breton history. You are most kind.”

He made his adieus to the Countess zu Ehrenstern, and left the two standing there, by the cliff wall, together. He walked homeward over the moor, slowly, for it was not as late as he had said. He had left because of the turn the conversation had taken. He had felt curiously alien and strange. He knew nothing of these matters, of the very problematical Is and all such ancient things. He wondered what the marquis had meant by speaking of the city as sleeping, and what the countess had meant by her words about the mass. He was conscious of a feeling of annoyance at his ignorance, and, after the manner of the ignorant, at the serious and grave fashion in which these people treated things which he looked upon as flimsy fable.

And, from this, he fell to thinking, as he climbed the long hill toward the Chapel of St. They, of the countess's confession, before the marquis appeared. It had surprised him much more than he had been willing to show. He had never thought of himself as successful with women, or as especially popular; that the marquise de Kersalec and Varvara zu Ehrenstern should have considered him a sort of Don Juan, seemed to him absurd.

Also, he thought, laughing lightly, of the countess's question, when he had complained of his heart trouble: “Is there nothing you could take for it?”

“No one ever had a more direct dare than that,” he said to himself. “I wonder—I wonder why I did not take it. Somehow, I seemed not quite to want to. There must be something the matter with me. I actually did not want to!”

V

While Captain Berkeley was making his way across the moor to Château Kerval, the Marquis de Kersalec stood by the sea wall, talking to Varvara zu Ehrenstern, and it seemed that he had found, at last, an intelligent and a sympathetic listener; for, as he talked, his pallid face flushed a little, and his eyes brightened, and the mask of slight indifference, which he habitually wore in public, was quite laid aside. But, at the end of perhaps half an hour, he looked over the countess's shoulder toward the foot of the garden, and frowned a bit,

“The Earl of Strope is driving up,” he said. “If you will pardon me, I shall go inside. I do not like Lord Strope.” And he beat a rather hasty retreat into the château.

He started, by force of habit, toward the suite of rooms where were his library and his study, and where he often shut himself up for days at a time, sleeping in a small adjoining room, or even upon a couch in the study. But, at the door, he changed his mind, and rang for a servant.

“Go up to madame's apartments,” he said to the man, “and have madame's maid ask if I may be received for a few moments.” For the marquis, in his household, clung to many of the courtly and old-fashioned customs, and he would no more have thought of penetrating to his wife's apartments without first sending a servant to ask permission, than he would have thought of invading the rooms of a guest.

The man returned, bringing word that madame would be pleased to receive monsieur, and the marquis went up, at once, to her suite.

The marquise lay in a reclining chair by a little table, and she had been reading an English novel, which lay open, face downward, upon her lap. She lifted her hand to her husband, and he bent over it, very gallantly, and kissed it.

“I wished to make sure, personally,” said he, “that you were coming on as well as they told me. It has been quite three or four days, I think, since I have seen you.”

“1t has been six,” said the marquise, in an unencouraging tone.

“Ah?” said her husband, absently; and he chafed his hands together, standing beside the little reading-table. “You look very well, indeed,” he offered, after a pause, “very well, indeed. And beautiful as ever,” he continued, with a little bow.

The marquise was so rude as to make a slight face, which her husband did not see.

“Captain Berkeley has been here this morning,” he went on, “to inquire after your health. It was most polite of him.”

The marquise betrayed a slight increase of interest. “I should not have imagined,” said she, “that he was the sort of man that would appeal to you. I understand that much of his career has been—not dishonorable, perhaps, but far from admirable.”

“Ah?” said the marquis, “as to that, I, of course, know nothing. But he seemed to me a young man of very great intelligence. I am not so foolish as to suppose that, because a man's interests are quite apart from what is all in all to me, he is lacking in intelligence. I took rather a fancy to this Captain Berkeley. We must have him here to dinner, soon.”

“As you like,” she agreed, wearily. “It will, at least, be an event.”

The marquis took a turn about the room, clasping and unclasping his hands behind him. “You—you have not many events in your life here, Aurélie, have you?” he asked, a little awkwardly. “I suppose it becomes at times almost—almost tiresome.” He spoke as if in question, looking at her across the room with an expression of deprecation, of half-apology.

“'Almost'?” queried the marquise, with a flash of nervous anger; “'almost'? It is a grave, I tell you, a living grave! It is enough to drive one mad. What have I to fill my life, in this triste country of granite and bruyère? Whom do I ever see? What do I ever do but sleep and take my meals, and try to make the days pass? I tell you, it is a living grave!”

The marquis sat down in a chair across the table from his wife, and his hands stroked the polished arm-rests. He did not speak at once—he was searching for words that might make some impression upon her, might make her see how impossible it was for him to alter their mode of life. He was not a dull man, and he saw at once that his wife's complaint was no meaningless outburst of anger, but that she had been suffering in silence, probably for a long time, and that the words had been wrung from her in a moment of nervous weakness.

“I am sorry,” he said, at last; “I am more sorry than I can tell you. Aurélie. It must be very dreary for you. I wish it might be otherwise, but I do not see how it can be—for the present, at least. I must do my work, alas—I wish it made so much of an appeal to you that you could do it with me—and I cannot be disturbed by constantly entertaining visitors. What is there I could do to make your life pleasanter, my dear?”

“You could let me go to Paris, now and then,” she answered. You could let me travel—make visits—do as other women do.”

“A wife's place,” said the marquis de Kersalec, with dignity, “is beside her husband. I do not approve of these modern ménages, in which husband and wife have each their circles of friends, and meet now and then, practically as strangers. If a wife cannot share her husband's interests, she should at least remain at the head of his house.”

The marquise turned wearily in her long chair. “That is what I expected you to say,” said she, “and that ends the argument, does it not? I am your wife, and I remain at the head of your house, as you desire. I shall remain there till I am dead, I suppose, while you are buried among your books and your—dreams.”

The marquis made a little exclamation of anger, but his wife turned quickly toward him, stretching out a hand.

“Ah, no; ah, no! I did not mean that, Jean!” she cried. “Forgive me, I did not mean to be rude, but I am almost at the end of endurance. If you had not let me ask Varvara zu Ehrenstern here, I do not know what I should have done. I really cannot bear it long. It is too dreadful! You should never have married me, and brought me here. I was not made to be alone. Oh, I know, I know,” she hurried on, as he would have spoken, “I was a Kersalec, and so were you, and we were the last of the line, and they wished us to marry, but—sometimes, Jean, I think that people have no right to marry, unless they love each other—that it is a sin, something monstrous. In some countries, in England and in America, they tell me, young people are not given in marriage, but arrange their own marriages, just because they love each other. Somehow, I think that is the only right way. We did not love each other, you and I. We liked each other, that was all, and there seemed very important reasons why we should marry—I wonder if they were important enough. I have not been much to you, have I? I have not been more than a head to your house, an obedient wife. I have not been a helpmeet, really. I wish I could take more interest in your work. Somehow, it all seems to me so remote, so alien, so—forgive me, Jean—so useless. It is because I have not the temperament, I suppose. I am very, very sorry. You should have married some one who understood you, who felt as you do.”

The marquis rose from his chair, with a quick sigh, and walked across to one of the windows. It chanced that this window looked out upon the garden, which lay within the sheltering walls of the castle. Varvara zu Ehrenstern and the old Earl of Strope were standing below, and, at the moment when the marquis reached the window, the countess looked up, and their eyes met. Then, a curious thing happened, for, with his wife's last words still in his cars, a great burning flush swept over the marquis's face, and his heart began, all at once, to beat most strangely.

When, at last, he turned back into the room, his eyes held a look which his wife had never before seen there. It was almost a look of terror. She feared that she had hurt him, had spoken too strongly, perhaps.

“Don't mind me, Jean,” she said, with a little attempt at laughter. “Perhaps, I said too much. Perhaps, I am a little nervous and overwrought. But, oh, if you can, let me out of this prison, now and then. I shall be the better for it, and you, too. Do not try me too far, dear; I cannot bear this for a lifetime. I warn you, do not try me tao far. I may grow desperate. You do not realize how terribly alone I am.”

But the marquis de Kersalec made an abrupt gesture, and left the room without speaking; and she sat up in her long chair, amazed, and watched him go. Never before had she seen him do a rude thing, or lose control of himself.

“I must have made him very angry,” she said to herself, “or he would never have gone away like that. Oh, yes, I must have made him very angry—I wonder why? At any rate, I spoke only the truth. I cannot bear this living death much longer. If Varvara had not come, I think I should have gone mad. Poor Jean! I am sorry to have made him angry. Ah, if only something would happen to take me out of this tomb, into the world where men and women live! If only something would happen!”

VI

The earl left his trap with the groom at the gate, and came up into the garden, through the little postern door in the north wall.

“How do you do, madame?” he said to the Countess zu Ehrenstern. “I am looking for a young man called Berkeley, who is by way of being a friend and guest of mine. I have been driving over to the Pointe du Raz, and I stopped in here to give him a lift homeward, in case he has not already gone.”

“He went quite half an hour ago,” said she. “And I should rather like to know why people feel called upon to apologize and to invent excuses for stopping in to pass the time of day with me. With Captain Berkeley, it was the illness of the marquise that must be asked after; with you, sir, it is the comfort of Captain Berkeley. I consider you both uncomplimentary in the extreme.”

But the old gentleman laughed. “Why, now, madame,” said he, “you drive me to the wall—of truth. I came here expressly to pass the time of day, as you put it, with you. I fabricated the Berkeley excuse as I came up the gravel path. I am, by the way, thinking of sending Robert Berkeley home. He interferes with my pleasures. I see very little of you in these days, and I lay it all to his interfering selfishness.”

“Why don't you set in to cut him out?” suggested the Countess zu Ehrenstern.

“Alas, he has cut me out!” complained the old gentleman.

“That shows,” said she, “a craven spirit, a lack of pertinacity on your part, sir, which disappoints me sorely.”

The earl laughed again. “You are a very accomplished young woman, madame,” said he. “I have taken a great liking to you. I was saying so, only this morning, to my rival, Captain Berkeley. Was that the marquis who retreated so very hastily as I approached? I could not avoid seeing his flight.”

“Yes,” said the countess. “He has gone back to his work, I believe. He came out into the garden to greet Captain Berkeley, and stopped a hall-hour after the captain left. We were talking of the work he has in hand.”

“Ah,” said the old gentleman, “of what lies out—there!” And he waved an arm toward the Baie des Trépassés.

“And of those who built it,” said she, “and of those who sank it under the sea.”

The earl leaned his elbows upon the low wall, and stared out over the flashing waves, his shaggy white brows drawn into a thoughtful frown. “I wonder,” he said, “I wonder if he is mad—as they say.”

“Oh, no,” said the Russian, very positively; “no, he is not mad. It may be that he is deluded in some of the things he believes, some of the things he—hopes for. It may be he has so long sat apart from the world that dreams have come to have substance and place with him, but—oh, no, he is not mad. He is very sane indeed, and he has a most unusual mind.”

“What do you mean?” demanded the Earl of Strope. “What do you mean by 'some of the things he hopes for'? What things does he hope for, madame? Does he expect to sit on the throne of his so-called ancestors? does he expect Is to rise from the sea?”

The countess looked at him, oddly, for an instant. “Did I say that?” she asked. “Did I say he hoped for anything? That must have been a slip of the tongue. But he is not mad. You English” she went on, smiling, “you English have no imagination. You have no instinctive belief in the truth of things; you are always demanding proofs. It is a great pity.”

“Still, proofs, madame” said the old earl, stubbornly, “proofs are, after all, good, comfortable, tangible things, and dreams are bitter in the walking. His wife is little in sympathy with him, I should think.”

“Very little,” agreed the Countess zu Ehrenstern, “and that, too, is a great pity. She is lonely here. She was not born for this sort of life, nor for this sort of man.”

“He should never have married her,” said the old gentleman, “to bring her here to such a life. He should have married some one who was in sympathy with his work, some one of like temperament—who might have helped him.”

“Yes,” said she, slowly, “yes, he should have done that.” And she turned her head to look up at the gray walls above her. It was just at the moment when the marquis had come to the window, and their eyes met.

The countess turned away, and leaned over the low sea-wall, with her face to the wind. “Yes,” she said again, very softly, “he should have done that.” And she was silent for a long time.

“Ah, well,” said the old gentleman, starting from his reverie, “there are very sad mistakes all around us; we see them every day. And the saddest of all are, I think, the matrimonial ones. Sometimes, they last out a lifetime, and are buried; and, sometimes, they right themselves in strange ways. The books say, this is a humdrum world; but that is a lie. I am an old man, countess, and I have seen some very odd things—but the oddest were, after all, the most natural. Ah, yes, the books lie. I have lived a long time, and I know it.”

VII

Captain Berkeley reconnoitred cautiously through the grill in the garden gate.

“Ah,” said he, “she is at it again, persecuting the poor little insects that never did her any harm—as if they might not appreciate a superior thing in hydrangeas, as well as other people! I believe she has no heart.” And he went through the gate.

She had on a frock of very pale yellow, with white lace at unexpected intervals, and she was roofed, as it were, by a most preposterously huge and ornate hat, made of straw and the same white lace, with great strings at the back, which quite concealed her head.

“Good morning!” sad Captain Berkeley to the back of the yellow-and-white frock. “May I offer you a cigarette?”

She turned about, dropping the rubber atomizer, with which she had been persecuting the innocent insects, and Captain Berkeley fell back a step—and another step, stumbling; and something caught at his throat to check his breathing, till he thought he should never breathe again; and something else caught at his heart to check its beating, till he thought it would never beat again; and so he stood for a long time, staring, quite helpless to move or speak.

He knew, in the first flash, that she must be the marquise, but he had pictured the marquise as middle-aged, like her husband. He had pictured her—as one will picture a person whom one has never seen, whimsically and without reason, a fretful invalid magnifying a trifling indisposition into something for which she must take to her bed. He could not remember that the earl had said very much about her. He had talked chiefly of the marquis and of Madame zu Ehrenstern. He had rather dreaded the marquise's return to health, since she must, perforce, rob him of many of his tête-a-têtes with the countess. That was what he had thought her: middle-aged, a fretful invalid. Middle-aged! This was a girl, young and fresh, and exquisite beyond belief. She had great, gray eyes, and, at the moment, they were very wide and fixed—frightened, one might say. And she had dark, almost black hair, that was turned away from her forehead in a great, soft wave, and broke into little rebellious curls before her ears. And all the contour of her face was so lovely that it may not be told, so dainty and so perfect that there are no words for it. It was not a Latin face, nor Breton, either, he thought; but a type between these two, a type he had never before seen, save in dreams and imaginings.

One would have called her tall, for she was slender, and she stood and moved like a queen; but, measuring her by his own height, he saw that she was rather under medium stature.

“Oh, madame!” said he, unsteadily, when breath and voice had come to him, at last; “oh, madame, will you forgive me? For I did not know; I thought that you were the Countess zu Ehrenstern—I did not know. And will you permit me to introduce myself? I am Captain Robert Berkeley, and I am stopping at Château Kerval, with the Earl of Strope.”

She caught her hand to her breast, suddenly, and gave a stifled cry, but her eyes never left his face. “Captain—Berkeley!” she cried, so softly that he scarcely heard her voice. “You, Captain Berkeley? You? Ah, no, it is impossible! They tol' me— You cannot be Captain Berkeley.”

“Alas, madame,” said he, with an apologetic laugh, “I am Robert Berkeley, and I once held a captain's commission in her majesty's army.”

“Bot I 'ad thought—” she began; and halted. “I 'ad believe'—” she continued; and went no further.

“You are ver' differen' from w'at I 'ave expect', monsieur,” she said, at last. “I—I was a little—surprise'!”

Captain Berkeley made a gesture of despair. A very little smile began at the corners of the lady's mouth, and struggled there against her efforts. Then, after a moment, she held out her hand.

“l am ver' glad,” said she, “at las' to wel-come you to Château Kersalec. Your inquiries for my 'ealth were brought me, each day, by Var—by the Countess zu Ehrenstern. You were ver' kin'.”

Captain Berkeley took the hand in his, and bent over it. “I hope I shall have no occasion for further kindness of that sort, madame,” said he.

“It 'as been so great an effort, monsieur?” she asked.

“That was not quite my thought, madame,” said Captain Berkeley. And the very little smile struggled again at the corners of the lady's mouth.

Then, all at once, as if she had suddenly bethought herself of what her attitude toward this man should be, she turned quite sober, and a little stiff and formal.

But, “Oh, my lady, my lady!” cried Captain Berkeley to his soul; “you were never made for stiffness and formality, but for all kindness and tenderness and joy—not for frowns, my lady, but for smiles and laughter. What was heaven thinking of to set you in this barren land?

“I will sen' a maid,” said she, making a little motion to gather her skirts together, “I will sen' a maid to fin' Varvara—to fin' the Countess zu Ehrenstern, that she may not lose your call upon 'er.”

“Oh, madame,” protested Captain Berkeley, “why drag an unwilling countess into my presence? Have mercy upon her. She may be asleep, or very busy about something of importance. She may be,” he suggested, eagerly, “engaged in good works—giving alms to the poor, or—or something like that.”

And, for the third time, the Marquise de Kersalec had trouble with the corners of her small mouth. “You are mos' thoughtful, monsieur,” said she, and she sat down, with an appearance of some unwillingness, upon one of the garden seats; “an' mos' charitable, too, to theenk at once that the Countess zu Ehrenstern might be so well employ'. 'As your life been full of good works, Captain Berkeley, that you are so ready to look for them in othaires?”

“You are very cruel, madame,” said he, sighing. “Have I deserved it?”

“If all they 'ave say of you is true, monsieur,” said she, “you deserve ver' great cruelty, more than will probably evvaire come your way.”

“more than has, of late, been visited upon me, marquise?” asked Captain Berkeley, and he laughed a little.

She raised swift, startled eyes to his. “I do not understan' you, monsieur,” she murmured, but her cheeks went pink.

“The countess has not told her that she gave the thing away,” commented Captain Berkeley to himself. Then, aloud, he said: “Do not believe what they say of any man, madame nor the half thereof. No man is so bad as the gossips make him; for, even though all they say of him be true—by a marvel—yet in every man there is something good, and that the gossips will never tell you.”

The marquise made a deprecating gesture, as if she would dismiss a topic which became tiresome. “You are ver' probably right, monsieur,” said she. I shall not dispute with you. Indeed, the subject is one I should not 'ave brought up. It was not fair, nor polite. I beg your forgiveness, monsieur. Tell me 'ow you like our Pointe du Van.”

“It is very fine, marquise,” said he, “One may find few coasts which are wilder and more tempestuous, or grander in time of storm. It is very fine, but bleak and barren. Does not one grow lonely here, madame?”

“Yes,” said the Marquise de Kersalec, and she looked away over the stony moor; “yes, one grows lonely, 'ere—so lonely! it is a bleak, triste country, monsieur. There is nothing bot win' an' sea, nothing bot rocks an' gorse an' bruyère—nothing bot dreams and legends.” It was as if she spoke to herself, and she could not have known how bitter her voice became.

“Dreams and legends!” echoed Captain Berkeley, thoughtfully. “The land is wrapped in dreams and legends, is it not?—strange dreams and strange legends. They are, for the most part, new to me. It is hard to take them seriously. The marquis, they tell me, is engaged in a great work upon the early legends—or history.”

“Yes,” said she, and her voice was still low and bitter and very lonely; “yes, 'e 'as given is life to it.”

“He offered, yesterday,” said young Berkeley, “to show me something of the work he is doing, to tell me something of this strange history which people call legend. I shall be glad to take advantage of his offer. They tell me,” he went on, in a deprecatory tone, as one speaks of something rather absurd and preposterous, and apologizes for speaking of it, “they tell me that he is—that the marquis is—descended from the last king of Is.” He half expected the marquise to laugh.

“Oh, yes,” said she, quite readily, “yes; we are both descend' from the king of Is. We are cousins, my 'usban' an' I, the las' of our line.”

Berkeley, standing with his arms upon the wall's coping, looked out across the Baie des Trépassés, where the gulls wheeled and cried.

“Keeping watch over your lost kingdom,” said he, half in jest. “It is a lonely watch: and, only a few hours away, there is Paris, with men and women and lights and music, with balls and plays and opera, and all the gay, happy things that people do to make life brighter.”

“Monsieur, monsieur!” cried the Marquise de Kersalec, sharply; and, when he turned to her, her eyes were wet and her lips trembling.

“Oh, madame!” said he, in a voice that she would not have believed he could command—lower and deeper and more tender than any voice she had ever heard; “oh, madame, can you forgive me? I shall not forgive myself. I have hurt you, and I would not do that for anything in God's world. You were lonely, madame, and I have made you lonelier, with my thoughtless chatter. I beg you to forgive me!”

“Ah, monsieur,” said the marquise, “it is nothing—bot nothing!” and she tried to laugh. “For a moment, one little moment, w'en you 'ave speak of—of all those things that a woman love', an' that I may not 'ave, I—I was sad. See, monsieur, it is gone, an' I laugh. I am ver' 'appy 'ere at Kersalec, ver' contented an' busy. We Bretons do not care for crowds an' gaiety; we are quieter. We love the sea an' the open moors, monsieur. We are a ver' simple folk, an' you mus' not fill our 'eads with thoughts of Paris an' of balls an'—all such. Per'aps, in a few years, w'en my 'usban's work is finish', we may go about more, an' you will see us at the opera an' at those plays an' balls you speak of. They mus' be—ver' nice, monsieur. monsieur, w'y do you look so fierce an' savage?”

“I was indulging in profanity, madame,” said Captain Berkeley, “for the good of my soul.”

“I 'ave never 'ear',” said she, in a slightly shocked tone, “that profanity was good for the soul.”

“It sometimes relieves it, madame,” said the captain.

“It may imperil it,” she submitted, virtuously.

“Yet many people,” he insisted, “have been known to imperil their souls, for relief from what was tolerable.”

He spoke lightly, and with no thought for his words; but the Marquise de Kersalec gave him a sudden, swift look from widened eyes, and then remained silent, staring out over the gay flowers of the garden; and, after a long time, she sighed, very wearily, and rose to her feet.

“One mus' be ver' desperate to do that, mus' one not?” she asked; “ver' desperate an' ver' weecked. One's soul is a precious thing, monsieur. W'at would biccome of one, if one's soul were los'? Ah, 'ere come' the countess, at las'. Does your 'eart beat quick, monsieur? Now, we shall 'ave some thé à la russe.”

VIII

It was two dayvs after this that the marquis and Marquise de Kersalec and Varvara zu Ehrenstern came over to Château Kerval for luncheon. The affair passed pleasantly enough, for the earl was in excellent humor, and even the marquis revealed a wholly unlooked for fund of anecdote. Only the marquise seemed a bit distraite and preoccupied. She looked paler than her wont, also, and tired about the eyes.

They spent a half-hour after luncheon in going over the castle, which had some peculiarities of construction, notably a series of underground chambers, hollowed, for the most part, out of the living rock. Then, as the day was warm and fine, neither windy nor too bright, they strolled out through the courtyard and along the cliff's edge, at the north of the Pointe du Van, where lies the great Baie de Douarnenez.

As they walked, it chanced that Robert Berkeley and the marquise fell a little apart from, and ahead of, the others, and, looking back presently, saw them some distance behind, preparing to sit down among the great boulders of granite which line the high cliff.

“Those two,” said Varvara zu Ehrenstern, “are quite too energetic for a deliberate person like myself. I frankly admit that I am lazy. Perhaps, that is because I am a Russian. I like strolling with frequent stops, but I absolutely refuse to walk. If either of you two, or both of you, are athirst for exercise, you may desert me. I am going to sit down and rest.”

“Why should we not all three sit down?” inquired the earl. “This is a fine spot, I think. One sees a great distance. Will you be comfortable on that rock, countess?”

“Not so comfortable as I mean to be,” said she. I am going to sit on the little patch of heather, with my back to the boulder—so! Now,” she laughed, “if only I had that other rock for my arm, I should be quite happy;” and she pointed to a boulder of granite, worn round by age and weather, which lay at a little distance, half buried in the ground.

“Would you really like it?” asked the old gentleman, simply.

“Indeed, yes,” said she, laughing again, for she had no thought that the stone could be lifted by any three men together.

But the earl went and stood over it, with his strong legs planted well apart; and he settled his hands under the worn edges of the rock, and bent his shoulders to the strain, and it seemed as if he lifted a block of wood or a footstool, only that, at the first moment, they heard the muscles of his arms and shoulders crackle gently, and they saw his face redden a bit, and the veins stand out upon his forehead. He brought the rock over to where the countess sat, and laid it so that she might rest her arm upon it. Then he sat down upon the turf, near by.

Both the countess and the Marquis de Kersalec felt vaguely, though without in the least realizing the true magnitude of the thing, that they had seen a tremendous feat of bodily strength performed, through a mere whim and for a trifling end, and they looked at this strange, grim old giant with a silent wonder that was almost awe.

“I did not suppose any man living could do that,” said the countess, after a moment, and there was a thrill of genuine admiration in her voice. “I was only joking when I spoke. I should not have believed it humanly possible.” She gave a little, nervous laugh. “You are almost too strong to be canny, Lord Strope,” she said. “One is almost afraid of you. Tell me, did you ever use your strength against a man, when you were very angry?”

“Yes,” said the earl, “but only once—that is, only once when I was angry. It was out in China, and the man had tried to strangle me from behind, at night. I believe I broke him,” he added, reflectively, as if he were speaking of some fragile toy.

The countess laughed again. “It must certainly have been at night,” said she; “no man would be so mad as to attempt to strangle you—if he had once had a look at you.”

“No,” said the earl, quite seriously, “no, that would be very unwise.” He gazed out over the sea, frowning, and, for an instant, his iron face took on a look of old age.

“I dread coming to the time when I must lose my strength,” he said. “I dread it more than I can say. I have always enjoyed my strength, have taken a sort of childish pleasure in being much stronger than other men.” He laughed, half apologetically. “I own that I am vain of it,” he said, “and particularly so, since it has remained with me past the limit of most men's lives. Yes, I dread its going.” He turned toward the Marquis de Kersalec, with a quick jerk of his great shoulders, as if he would shake off the thought that haunted him.

“How does young Robert Berkeley impress you?” he asked. “I think a great deal of him. He and my grandson-in-law, Isabeau de Monsigny's husband, are the only young men I have been genuinely fond of, in many years.”

“I liked him at once,” said the marquis. “We have, I should think, almost no tastes or interests in common, but I like him. He has a singular amount of personal magnetism. There are some men so gifted—and some women. I should imagine that Captain Berkeley was very attractive to women, though he is not at all the type one calls a lady's man.”

“Yes,” agreed the earl, laughing, “he has always been attractive to women—unfortunately so. He has something of a reputation for it, but he has much besides that to recommend him. He is called one of the most promising of the younger diplomatists in the British service. He will rise high, I believe, if he cares to. He had a fine record in the military service, also. He won his captaincy and a D. S. O. for conspicuous gallantry in action. He saved the life of a brother officer at a most extraordinary risk of his own.”

“He is a very unusual young man,” said the marquis, nodding emphatically, “a young man worth knowing. I should like to see more of him. He is coming to my study, some day, to look into Breton history a little. It is a new subject to him.”

“It is a new subject to most of us, said the old Earl of Strope, thoughtfully. “Very few people outside of Brittany know anything about the early Bretons—save, of course, those scholars who are studying the Celtic peoples. It is a new subject to most of us, and a very fascinating subject. When I first came here, years ago, I was inclined to scoff at the local legends, and to be impatient of what I called the Breton superstition, but I have grown more tolerant. Perhaps, it is because one grows quicker of belief as one gets on in years. Perhaps, it is—as I said the other day to Robert Berkeley—that here in Brittany one breathes in the spirit of the country with the air. I am not prepared to say that I place confidence in all the popular legends—no one does that, I fancy—but I scoff no longer. There is much more truth abroad than the young and sure are inclined to credit.”

“Very much more,” said the Marquis de Kersalec, rather sadly, “But the young and sure, the mockers and the indifferent, make up the world, ici bas. It leaves one very much alone.”

“No,” cried Varvara zu Ehrenstern, in a low, strong voice; “no, not alone! The mockers and the indifferent may make up much of the world, but there are those who believe and sympathize, as well, who would help if they might. There are always such.”

The marquis's face flushed suddenly, and a light burned in his eyes. “Thank God for them!” said he. And the Earl of Strope looked from one to the other of the two earnest faces, wondering what it all meant.

But the other two, Robert Berkeley and the marquise, when they looked back and saw the three preparing to sit down, halted a moment to watch.

“Per'aps,” said the marquise, “we ought to go back. I did not realize that we were so far a'ead of them.”

“As you like, madame,” said he. “It is finer here and before us, but, if you prefer, we will join the others.”

“No,” said the marquise, at last, “per'aps they will be coming on, directly. If they do not, we can go back after a while. Firs', we mus' see the birds, the mouettes an' the goëlands. See, monsieur, there are thousan's, millions of them!”

They stood at that part of the cliff where there is an indentation of the shore called the Bay of Gulls—la Baie des Mouettes—and the rocks below were white with the birds, and the air was noisy with their cries. It is a sort of double bay, with a wall of rock thrust out through its middle, and on one side the mouettes live, and on the other the goëlands, which have a ring of black about their necks.

There was a little haze abroad, which dimmed the sun, and lay far off upon the sea, a belt of silver; so that one might not say where sea ended, and sky began. It was warm, and there was no wind on this side of the point, only a long, smooth swell that slapped and sucked at the rocks far below the cliff's edge.

The two walked farther on, past the Bay of Gulls, where there was no clamor, only the slap of water against the rocks below. And the marquise sat down on the edge of a boulder, turning her face to the quiet sea, and to the breath of cool air that rose from it.

“'Ere it is nice,” said she, with a sigh, “cool an' fresh an' beautiful. Can you see the othaires, m'sieu le capitaine? Are they coming, no?”

“Not yet,” said young Berkeley. “They are all three sitting in a circle on the heather, and I should say that the marquis was telling a story. It looks that way.”

“It is ver' strange,” said she, shaking her small head, “'ow 'e 'as been, the las' few days—the marquis. Me, I do not understan'. 'E does not shut 'imself up any more, an' e looks—looks interest' in theengs. I 'ave not seen 'im so in a ver' long time. It is odd, yes—bot, of course, ver' nice,” she added, hastily.

“Of course,” agreed young Berkeley, nodding, “of course. Where is the bell?” he asked, presently. “There is a bell down below, somewhere. I have been hearing it ever since we came here.”

“A bell?” said the marquise. “There should be no bell near 'ere.” And she held up her head to listen.

“Perhaps,” said Captain Berkeley, “it is only an odd sound the water makes against the rocks below—a little cavern, or something; but it is very like a muffled bell. There! listen!”

But the marquise, who had come to his side at the edge of the cliff, crossed herself, and turned pale; and she said something very rapidly, in Breton, that might have been a prayer.

“It is a bell, monsieur,” she said, presently, “a drown' bell, a bell under the sea, that mus' go ringing, ringing, al-ways. Sometimes, one 'ear' them w'en the sea is calm. Per'aps, it is one of the bells of is, w'at may nevvaire be still. Me, I 'ave 'ear' them over in the Baie des Trépassés. Theenk, monsieur, nevvaire, nevvaire to res', like the good bells on lan', bot to swing with the tides, ringing, like the souls of the poor drown' men, the marins 'oo mus' wander in purgatory biccause they 'ave not 'ad the good death—la bonne mort—because they 'ave die'—'ow do you say?—unshriven.”

And then, sitting on the edge of the great boulder, with her beautiful face very sober and serious and full of simple faith, she told him the strange Breton tale of the flight of the bells to Rome on the night of Holy Thursday each year, and of their blessing there by the Pope, and of their return homeward, ready for the peals of Holy Saturday morning.

“Bot the cloches noyées, monsieur,” said she, “the drown' bells may not go biccause they 'ave not 'ad the good death. It is ver', ver' sad.”

And, because he asked to know more, she told him about the chasse St-Hubert, when the birds return in the Springtime, and about the pious folk of St. Malo, who taught their children to pray:

and of how they were miraculously saved by the prayer, from the ships of the Black Prince. And she told him the story of Perronik l'Idiot, who is the Breton Percival, and of his adventures with the sorcerer and the giant and the flower that laughs, and the yellow lady.

And Berkeley listened, not speaking, save to ask her to go on, only watching her face and the changes of expression that went over it, from anger to tenderness, and from pity to pride. She spoke, not in her halting English, but in French, with a word of Breton, now and then, when there was need, and her voice was low and sweet and gentle, the voice that certain of those women have who are great singers.

When she would tell him no more, but only laughed and shook her head, and protested that she was tired, young Berkeley rose to his feet, with a long sigh.

“You have taken me out of myself and out of my world, madame,” said he, “into a world I knew nothing of—a garden of strange flowers. I return with some stiffness. This is the same sea, and the muffled bell is still ringing, and here are the same moors, but I have altered somewhat. I seem not to fit into my old place.” He shook his head at her, whimsically, laughing a little.

“Have you no antidote for your philters, madame?” he demanded. “Does not your magic carpet carry one back to one's home?”

“That,” said she, smiling up at him, “iz as one weeshes. Would you be aggain from w'ere you started, monsieur?”

“No, madame,” said Cptain Berkeley, “I think not.” And, after that, neither of them spoke for a time.

“What did you mean, madame,” asked Captain Berkeley, at last, “what did you mean, two days ago, when we met for the first time, by accident, in the garden, when you said that I was very different from what you had expected to see—when you refused, at first, to believe that I could be Captain Berkeley?”

“That is not a fair question, monsieur.”

“What did you mean, madame?” he persisted.

“You did not look,” said she, “the man w'at could 'ave done the theengs they 'ave tol' me you did. You did not look the sort of man 'oo 'ad leeve' the life they tol' me of, oo 'ad broken women's 'earts for—for to amuse yourself. You looked differen', monsieur—ah, so ver' differen'! Me, I could not be-lieve it was you. Ah, monsieur, monsieur!” she cried, and her voice was not quite steady, and her eyes were full of a distress that Captain Berkeley would not let himself see; “w'y is a man allow' to be so? W'y does le bon Dieu let a man look as you look, an' speak as you speak, an' seem to be w'at you seem to be, monsieur, w'en the man 'as been w'at you 'ave been—selfish always, an' quite, quite 'eartless? W'at protection shall a woman 'ave w'en she cannot tell w'at a man is from w'at e seem' to be? Ah, yes,” she cried, when he would have spoken, “I 'ave no right to say these theengs; you need not tell me that, monsieur. Bot let me take the right. Per'aps I may save some woman's 'eart from breaking. It is not as if I were a girl, or as if I were a—a widow, like Varvara. me, I may say w'at they may not, biccause I am a married woman. Some day, you will marry, monsieur, yes? Some day, you will fall in love—real love, Ah, w'at kin' of a 'eart can you breeng to the woman you love, monsieur le capitaine? Wat can you say to 'er that you 'ave not said biffore to a dozen othaires?”

“Oh, madame!” said Captain Berkeley, very low, and his face had grown pale and drawn and haggard; “oh, madame, it I true that I could bring her no untried boy's affection. The heart I should lay at her feet would have been more than once tenanted, and it would be somewhat worn and marked by hard usage. I could not swear her unspoken vows, madame, or call her by unfamiliar terms of endearment. She would find me a little hardened by experience, a little embittered by something else than joy. But the heart I brought for her keeping would be an honest one, marquise, swept and empty of old furniture, garnished for her alone. There would be no ghosts of old tenants to rise up and frighten her, no claimant with a better right than hers. And, if the words I should use to her, if the vows I should swear, were old words and forsworn vows, they would be new for her, and fresh and sacred, and all my life would lie in the hollow of her hand.

“It is true, as they say, that I have loved—or thought I loved—more than once or twice or three times, but, when they have said that I broke hearts for play, that I tried to make women love me for my amusement, they have lied. I have never tried to make a woman love me, unless I loved her, madame, and I have never deliberately put a woman's love aside, save when the law demanded it, or after she had ceased to care for me. And, finally, if the gossips have busied themselves with me, as it seems they have done, it was because circumstances made the thing conspicuous, and not because the thing itself was worthy of note.” When he had finished, he sat still, with hands clasping and unclasping upon his knees, and haggard eyes that stared unheeding over the sea.

The marquise watched him for a long time, and it was well that neither the marquis nor Varvara zu Ehrenstern was there to see the pain and—something else, that shone in her great eyes. “You cannot be telling a lie,” she said, at last, very gently, “it is impossible that you are telling a lie. See, I believe you, monsieur—all you 'ave said. Per'aps, I have wrong' you. They 'ave tell me such theengs! I wondaire if you could do w'at you say—if any man could do it—breeng to the woman you love a heart not 'aunted by those 'oo 'ave dwel' in it biffore. I wondaire if any man can do that, monsieur. I wondaire— 'Ave I wrong' you, monsieur le capitaine? Ah, I would not do that, me. An' yet—yet I 'ope I 'ave done it; I 'ope it is as you say, biccause then you will be ver' 'appv, n'est-ce pas? An' some woman, she will be 'appy, too. You are not 'appy now, monsieur, no. Me, I 'ave seen that from the firs' moment. Hélas! my frien', there is much in thees worl', ici bas, w'ich is not 'appiness—much that is bittaire for us all; yes?” She broke off, with a catch in her breath; and, for another space, neither of them spoke. Then, “Monsieur!” she said, very timidly.

“What is it you would ask, madame?” said he.

“Jus' now, monsieur,” said the marquise, still timidly, “jus' now, w'en you speak of w'at you could breeng to the woman you love', 'ow you could love 'er, you—you 'ave speak ver' strong, monsieur, as if—as if—is there such a woman, monsieur le capitaine? Is there some woman w'at you love, now?”

“Yes, madame,” said he, very low; and the marquise's breath caught sharply again.

“A-ah!” said she, in a half-whisper; and, after a moment, “monsieur!”

“Yes?” answered Captain Berkeley.

“Monsieur,” she repeated, faltering, “I know I should not ask—I know there is no reason w'y I should know, bot—'oo is the woman, monsieur? Will you tell me 'oo is the woman?”

“That I may never tell you, madame,” he said.

“Nevvaire, monsieur?”

“I think never, madame,” said he.

“I wondaire,” said the marquise, and as if she spoke to herself, “I wondaire if it is Varvara. Ah, yes, yes; it mus' be. W'y could you not tell me, monsieur? Yes, it is Varvara! I 'ave watch' you, an' I 'ave watch' 'er. Oh, monsieur, do you love 'er ver', ver' much, weeth all your 'eart? If you do not love 'er so, leave 'er, monsieur; do not make 'er to love you. Ah, yes; it is Varvara! Me, I 'ave seen. You will make 'er love you, will you not? An' then you will marry 'er, and take 'er away, an' you will both be 'appy al-ways, yes? An' me—me, I shall be glad. Yes, of course, glad—ah, so glad! monsieur, monsieur, you will be kin' to 'er, an' true to 'er, an' nevvaire stop loving 'er, for she is ver' lovely, as lovely as she is beautiful. She is almos' the only frien' I 'ave!”

She broke off again, and they sat for a time, silent. Then, at last, she rose, shaking out her skirts. “Come, monsieur,” said she, with a little, uncertain laugh; “come, we mus' go back to the othaires. We 'ave been too long away.” And she came close to him, and put out her hand. I theenk I 'ave done you a great wrong, monsieur le capitaine,” she continued. “I beg you to forgive me, if you can. An'—an' I will do all I can—oh, all I can to 'elp you with—'er; all I can, monsieur!”

“Oh, madame, madame!” cried Captain Berkeley. He bent over the hand that she held out to him, kissing it, as once might kiss a queen's hand. When the marquise drew it away it was not quite steady, and her face was pale.

IX

“I think,” said Captain Berkeley, “that I shall go over to Kersalec this morning to make my call upon the marquis. It might be interesting.”

“Yes,” said the earl, nodding, “it might be very interesting. I should go by all means. I expect you will see and hear some strange things. The man may or may not be mad, but I fancy there can be no doubt that he has some remarkable knowledge at hand about his ancestors and the conditions here very long ago. I wish he had asked me to come, but he would never do that. We dislike each other—instinctively, I think.”

“He is a strange man,” said Robert Berkeley. “He takes very little heed of the world about him, I should say. He seldom sees it, and yet he came out of his shell most surprisingly the other day, when they were here at luncheon. He was quite like an ordinary human being. Even his wife noticed. She spoke to me about it.”

“It was odd,” said the earl, nodding again. “Something must have been stirring him out of his dreams, of late. He was not at all himself. One or two things happened which I did not understand—but, then, I am not acute. Perhaps, it is only a bit of ennui of his daily work, but—I think he has something on his mind. Yes, I should go over there by all means. Have you seen any of them since they were here?”

“I have seen the marquise once,” said Berkeley, “but only for a few moments. She tactfully withdrew to allow me a tête-a-tête with the countess. I have seen the countess twice.”

The old gentleman laughed, heartily. I shall dance at the wedding,” said he, “and with satisfaction. You are well suited, you two.”

“So the marquise told me,” said Captain Berkeley. I have not the countess's opinion on the subject. Well, I must be going. I shall he back for luncheon.”

On the sheltered terrace at Kersalec, he found the marquise, alone, with a bit of sewing. A newspaper lay on a table beside her. When she saw him in the avenue, she rose and made as if she would go in. Then, she sat down again, as if she knew that he must have seen her, and that her act would appear the height of rudeness.

“Good morning, madame,” said Captain Berkeley, cheerfully. “How dare you look so fierce and forbidding on a fine, fresh day like this? It's not Christian. I don't believe,” he went on, in a severe tone, “I don't believe you said your prayers this morning.”

“I al-ways say my prayers,” cried the marquise, indignantly.

“Ah?” said Captain Berkeley, with sympathy. “That must leave you very little time for other things. Then, if you have said your prayers,” he continued, “I can think of nothing which should put you in such a humor—unless you have had my sins at heart again.” But the marquise made no answer, and he went on past her, shaking his head, sorrowfully. “You are very depressing,” he sighed. “I dare say, it is only because your maid was slow about your hair, or because the coffee was bad, but you are quite impossible. I am going to get your husband to tell me stories.”

But he had gone no farther than the open door of the château when she spoke. “'Captain Berkeley,” she said.

“Yes, madame?” said Captain Berkeley, turning back from the door.

She took the open newspaper from the table beside her, and held it in her lap, looking down at it, as if she did not wish to meet his eyes. “Captain Berkeley,” she said again, in a low voice, “w'en you said to me, the othaire day, that you 'ave nevvaire make a woman love you unless you 'ave love' 'er—that you 'ave nevvaire deserted a woman, thrown 'er over w'ile she love' you, did you tell a lie?”

“No, madame,” said Captain Berkeley. “I have never told you a lie, and L never shall. I do not lie.”

“It was a lie, monsieur,” said she.

“No, madame,” said he, again. But the marquise held out to him the newspaper which she had in her lap, and pointed to a paragraph. The journal was a small, semi-society sheet, published daily in Paris, in English. It made a feature of personal paragraphs relating to the movements of people well known in the social world of the Continent, and these paragraphs were, as is common in such cases, often of the most trivial description, merely idle, and sometimes very ill-natured, gossip. The paragraph to which the marquise de Kersalec called Captain Berkeley's attention, chronicled the death of a certain woman of rank and social distinction—a death, the cause of which had puzzled the physicians; but those in the secret knew it to be nothing else than a broken heart. The paragraph then went on to recall a story with which, it said, many of its readers would be familiar, of the infatuation of this titled woman for a young diplomatist, late a captain in the British cavalry, whose love-affairs with other women of note were the talk of Europe. it was this man's heartless treatment of the deceased, claimed the journal, in spite of the long-continued efforts of an intimate friend of the two, which brought the woman to her death.

Captain Berkeley read the notice through, with flushing face, and, when he had finished, his eyes blazed across the paper at the marquise de Kersalec. “This,” said he, fiercely, “is a bare-faced and contemptible—” But, all at once, he stopped, and the marquise saw in his face the flash of some sudden thought.

“Wait!” he went on, swiftly, “wait a moment! Let me think. Good God, what a thing!” He took a few steps back and forth before her, his head bent, his face frowning and his hands smiting each other, as if he were fighting within himself over something momentous.

Then, at last, he halted beside the table, and laid his hand upon the paper, which he had dropped there. “I cannot deny this, madame,” said he, in a low tone.

“it is true, then, monsieur?” she asked.

“Yes, madame,” said he, and sighed; “yes, it is true.”

“An'—the othaire day,” persisted the marquise, “the othaire day, monsieur, you lied? An' jus' now, w'en you said that you 'ave al-wavs tell the truth to me, you 'ave lied aggain?”

Captain Berkeley raised to hers the saddest eyes she had ever seen. “Yes, madame,” said he, and turned away.

The marquise rose from her chair, facing him. Her eyes flashed, and her voice was hard. “Then,” said she, “I ave been right abbout you from the firs', in spite of w'at they all say. An' you are worse than a breaker of 'earts, you are a—a—no, I will not call any man w'at you 'ave confess' yourself to be.” She looked up over his shoulder,” and her voice dropped. “'Ere come' the marquis,” said she. “You will please not let—let this w'ich we 'ave said make any difference with 'im or with—the countess. After all, that dead woman is beyon' your tortures now, monsieur, an' it all make' no difference to any one—bot me.”

Captain Berkeley swung about toward the Marquis de Kersalec, and his face changed so swiftly that the woman looked at him with an unwilling admiration.

“At leas' 'e is a brave man!” she murmured to herself.

“Good morning,” said Captain Berkeley, as the marquis drew near. “I have come to hold you to your promise. I hope you have not forgotten it.”

“No,” said his host, smiling, “I am so far from forgetting it that I was thinking of you only this morning, wishing that you would come to Kersalec.” He looked doubtingly toward his wife, as if hesitating to take Captain Berkeley away at once, and thus leave her alone, for he was very careful and punctilious in these little matters of politeness.

But the marquise made a gesture of dismissal. “Do not wait 'ere on my account,” she begged. “The countess is coming out at once to sit with me.”

The two men bowed and left her, and went in the open door of the château, through a long, narrow corridor, high-arched with stone, and very gloomy, and through many rooms beyond, dim and bare and musty with age.

They came, at last, to a door, over which hung a curtain of tapestry, and the marquis, who was leading, halted and thrust aside the hangings.

“These are my rooms,” said he, standing aside for young Berkeley to enter.

There was first a little waiting-chamber, containing a table and two or three chairs, and, beyond it, with only a half-drawn curtain between, was the study of the Marquis de Kersalec. It was a great room, wide, and long, with an oak-beamed ceiling. it stretched along that side of the château which faced the sea, and there came from below, at the foot of the cliff, a constant murmur, faint and rhythmic, of waters beating upon rocks. it was a dim room, for the long row of casemented windows, narrow and high-set, which filled nearly all of the seaward wall, were of stained and painted glass, and the morning light came through this glass in faint beams, crimson and gold and blue and olive, and lay in splashes upon the floor and upon the furniture. In the afternoon, when the sun reached that side of the castle, the effect must have been very beautiful. There was tapestry upon the walls, faded and discolored. Read from left to right it told some strange story of knightly adventure—Perronik's quest of the cup and spear, perhaps. Also, there were stands of arms, and suits of armor. Some of this armor was of a pattern which Berkeley, albeit a student in these matters, had never before seen. And there were high book-shelves of oak, filled with great volumes in white vellum, all stained, save certain ones which held rolls of manuscript upon skin, like the Roman and Greek manuscripts, and these were enclosed in cases with glass doors. In the dim, far corners of the room burned bronze lamps, unmistakably Roman in design, and their oil emitted a perfume which filled the air, and showed against the light of the windows, in thin smoke-wreaths. Near the centre of the room, but a little toward the light from the windows, was a table of oak, large enough to take its place in that great room. This was littered with sheets of manuscript, and with books open or closed, and with maps, and with all such articles as a writer must employ.

Captain Berkeley dropped into the big chair of hewn oak to which the marquis waved him, and his eyes went from end to end of the long chamber. “What a wonderful room!” he said, in English; and then he bethought himself, and repeated his remark in French, for the marquis understood scarcely a word of the other tongue.

De Kersalec nodded across the great table. “It is a good room,” said he. “It has a—it has an atmosphere. It is a little apart from that world out there.”

And what he said was true. The huge, dim place, with its colored lights and its incense and its old tapestries, had an atmosphere of its own, which laid hold upon one at entering. It was apart from that world out there. It belonged to things very long dead—centuries gone by.

“I must give you a cigarette,” said the marquis, “and a glass of wine. They tell us that we must go to your England for the Oporto, which seems curious, but this, I think, is not altogether bad. It is very old and it is of a good year. You shall judge.”

Then, when he had poured out the wine, and it had been duly praised by Captain Berkeley, and when they had lighted their cigarettes, he sat for a time silent, turning his little glass between his fingers, and frowning thoughtfully down upon it.

“You wish, monsieur, to know something about the city which lies—out there,” said he, at last, “and of those who made it, and of those who sunk it under the sea.” It was curious that he should have used almost exactly the words which the Earl of Strope and Varvara zu Ehrenstern had used a few days before. “I hardly know where to begin,” he said, in a hesitating tone. “It is a great subject to deal with in an hour; it is like trying to tell, in a sitting, the history of the Egyptian or the Roman wars. We are a very ancient people, monsieur, we Celts. We were here, in Armorica, when the Romans came, under Julius Cæsar, fighting us with strange tactics, and teaching us how to build walls and roads. And, when we had learned all the Romans could teach, we drove them southward, into Gaul, and went on our way, wiser and somewhat altered. Yes, we are a very ancient people, and we walk by ourselves, as always. We do not mix with other races. We Bretons are pure of blood, and, southward, the Basques in Spain—Celts as we are—stand apart, pure and unmixed, and your Welsh and your Scotch and your Irish, all Celts, are slow to give up their characteristics—to marry with outlanders. It was with was that Christianity took its root in the North, and flowered, in spite of all opposition. We fought for it, shed our blood for it, vowed our lives to it—and made the civilization you have to-day. St. Patrice, St. Radok, St. Hervé! Great names, mousieur le capitaine, Irish, Cambrian, Breton! Europe owes more to them than she knows.

“Now, in the fourth and fifth centuries, as we count time, a great city grew up here about the Pointe du Raz, greater than anything else in the North, so great that when Paris was built and began to be of importance, it took its name from the other—paret-is; that is to say, equal to Is. All that part of Brittany which is called Cornouailles, was governed from Is, and much of Leon and the Pays de Vannes. At the beginning of the sixth century, the king in Is was Gradlon, and in his youth he was a great warrior, stern and hard toward his people. But, as he grew old, the two great priests in Brittany, St. Guénolé and St. Corentin, turned his heart, and he became a Christian, very gentle and very pious—so gentle, alas, that, bit by bit, his authority slipped from him, and his people went ways of their own. Is became infamous for its debauchery, and Ker-Ahés, which was Carhaix, was not at all behind it.

“Gradlon had a daughter called Ahés, very beautiful and very evil, monsieur—all that is wickedest, all that is most licentious. Not the prayers of her father, nor the warnings of St. Guénolé and St. Corentin, who preached often in Is, could move her. They only turned her to grosser madnesses. It was a crowning folly which destroyed the city. One of her lovers dared her to open the great central water gate in the dike, which held the sea at bay. He dared her to open the gate in a time of grande marée—when tides are highest. Only the king had the keys, and he never parted with them. But Ahés stole to his chamber by night, and took the keys from his neck. She must have been quite mad. No sane person would have done such a thing. But, after all, monsieur le capitaine, it was not a dissolute woman who destroyed Is, it was the wrath of God, Who had grown tired of the city's debauchery; Ahés was but His instrument.

“When the king awoke, the sea was in the streets of Is, driven before a tempest greater than any man had ever before seen. St. Guénolé, mounted upon his horse, and holding the king's war charger, called upon his sovereign to save himself, but Gradlon would not go till he had found his daughter, whom he loved most dearly in spite of her sins, and had set her behind him upon the horse. Then, they rode, and the sea dashed behind them, and the wind brought the sound of groans and shrieks and falling buildings. They rode fast, but the sea drove faster, till a wave caught the two horses, and set them swimming. Then, out of the storm's roar, came a great voice that cried, 'Gradlon, Gradlon, if you would not perish, loose that demon whom you carry behind you!' And, at the sound, the arms of Ahés slipped from her father's neck, and she disappeared in the waves. Then, the surge drew back, and the horses took footing again. They reached the cliffs at Landévennec, and, safe above the flood, the two men turned to look back. A black cloud, like a funeral pall, hung over the place, and lightnings flashed from it. The wind was very terrible—terrible enough to tear the breath from one's mouth—and, before it, waves like great mountain ranges, snow-capped, rolled in upon the lost city, and, with the thunder of their breaking, came always the crash of falling buildings, and the shrieks of those who had taken to the house-tops for shelter.

“St. Guénolé was upon his knees, praying to the God of wrath; but Gradlon stood looking back upon God's work. The wind blew the white hair across his eyes, and tore at the royal mantle, and the spray from the foot of the cliff wet his face, but he did not move or speak. And, while he watched, a wave came in out of the gloom beyond, greater than any of the others; it seemed to brush the low-hanging cloud with its crest of gray-white. It swept across the city, even with the tops of the highest buildings, even with the church spires; and Gradlon's eyes closed for an instant. Then, a wonderful thing happened, for, after the roar of the last great wave had passed, there came a sudden calm, most unnatural. The pall of cloud opened, and the moonlight shone through, over a black, still waste of water—where the city of is had been. Then, the king wept, very bitterly, as old men weep who have seen the ruin of all they love—so bitterly that the saint cried out with pity.

“'Gradlon, Gradlon!' said he, 'the mercy of God, which has saved you, may yet save Is. Pray!' And he prepared to say the mass upon the very rock where they stood. And, when he came to the Communion, he had an inspiration from the God Who loved him.

“O king?” he cried, turning to Gradlon, with the chalice in his hand—he had saved the sacred vessels from the flood, and was carrying them in his mantle—'O king; the Blood of Christ, which saved the world, shall yet save the city of Is!” And he hurled the cup, with its drop of precious wine, into the bay. Afterward, he had a revelation. The city had not perished; it was resting, unharmed, under the sea. It should, one day, reappear to do penance, but only when the drop of Christ's Blood, poured by Guénolé, should be recovered, and the mass he had begun should be finished. Hélas! monsieur le capitaine, the mass has never been finished.

“Near the spot where the king and St. Guénolé landed, there was a heathen altar, a stone where human sacrifices were made. The king took oath to build above it a church to Our Lady who had saved him, and this he did, calling it, Notre Dame de Rumengol, or Notre Dame de Tout Remède. You may see the chapel now, monsieur, though it has been several times rebuilt. Also, he founded an abbey at Landévennec, and there he lived the rest of his life, and died, and there his tomb is, to-day, in the crypt where all may see it. He was a very noble man. Pray for him!

“There is little more to tell. While the king and Guénolé sought safety from the flood, toward Landévennec, a mere handful of others gained the nearer heights. Nearly all of the city's inhabitants were drowned. The few saved founded two villages, in Cléden and in Goulien, called the villages of Kerisit, and the people themselves and their descendants were long known as 'ar K'herisided'—inhabitants of Is. Among them was one of the king's sons, and it is from this man that my wife and I are both descended. We are cousins.”

The marquis rose with a sigh, as if he had finished, and turned toward the windows, through which the light came in rays of gorgeous color. He opened one of them, and, at once, the beat of the sea upon the cliff's foot became a roar; and a gust of wind, fresh and strange upon that scent-laden air, came into the room, and rustled the papers on the great table. But the marquis stood for a long time by the open window, staring out across the Baie des Trépassés.

Captain Berkeley sat still in his chair, as he had sat during all of the marquis's tale, sprawling a little, his eyes fixed and wide. His cigarette had long since gone out, but he did not know, and it hung neglected from his lips, and scattered ashes on his knees.

The marquis turned back into the room, and drew toward him one of the folded papers which lay upon the table. “Here,” said he, in his gentle, tired voice, “is a map of the city of Is. It is, as you will see, a copy. I made it, myself, from the ancient manuscript—which I still have, but it is scaled up in its case. The dotted line in black is the line of the coast as it exists to-day. The city stretched, you see, around what is now the Pointe du Raz, from Gamelle, in the Baie d'Audierne, to Castel-ar-Roch, under Goulien, in the Baie de Douarnenez. Its centre, with the palaces of the king, was here in the Baie des Trépassés. Troguer, the village above the little St. They chapel, was one of its suburbs. You may see to-day, at Troguer, the walls of an ancient road which leads down toward the Baie des Trépassés. At Laoual was the chapel of St. Guénolé, where the seigneurs of the court went to hear mass—'forty mantles of purple cloth,' as the manuscripts have it. You will see the water gates marked. There were twelve of them, and the great central one, called the Puits, was that which Ahés, in her folly, opened.”

Captain Berkeley stared down at the map, only half comprehending what he saw. He noted, absently, how different was the coast from the outline of to-day; how the great Pointe du Raz and Pointe du Van were but heights, leading down to a seaside plain; how the wide Baie de Douarnenez was dry land; and how the Ile de Sein, now six miles away, was separated from the mainland only by a broad canal. And he looked up at the pale, habitually tired face of the Marquis de Kersalec, and a sudden wave of half-understanding and of pity and of dawning respect rose in him for this lonely man, who should be a king, but whom people called mad. He wondered if the man was really mad, yet with none of the amused contempt, none of the irritation, he had felt before. The room had laid its spell upon him—the room and the strange, quaint tale, and, above all, the quiet certainty of him who told it that the tale was true. He felt, dimly, that, later on, when he should be back in the good modern world of sunshine and practical things, when he should be talking it all over with the old earl, he would laugh and wonder how it could ever have seemed believable. But, at present, he felt not at all like laughing. The Roman lamps winked red eyes at him from the gloom beyond; little, blue-white veils of smoke, heavy with incense, drifted between him and the windows, wreathing the head of the man who sat across the table. The sea was a regular, rhythmical murmur again, a dragging sigh from very far away.

“And,” said Captain Berkeley, a bit timidly, a bit shamefacedly, “and you—you have—certain hopes, sir? You believe that—that the city lies intact down—yonder? You believe that it may one day rise again?”

But the Marquis de Kersalec shook his head, and rested it upon his hands, his elbows on the table before him.

“Hopes that I dare not hope, monsieur,” said he, very sadly; “beliefs that words make ridiculous. Who knows? There are many strange things. A Breton must dream his dreams. Who knows?”

“What did you mean, sir,” persisted Captain Berkeley, “by what you said of the drop of Blood, that Guénolé poured into the sea, which must be recovered; by what you said of the mass, which was begun and must be finished? I do not understand.”

But the marquis shook his bowed head, again. “I cannot tell you, monsieur,” said he. “What I repeated to you was a literal translation of the manuscript left by Guénolé. No one now can read the riddle—can tell what is meant by recovering the drop of Christ's Blood, or how the mass of Is may be finished. If only one knew! The peasants and fishermen about the point would tell you their version of it, if you might go among them, understanding the Breton tongue. There are many tales. There is one of a fisherman in the Baie des Trépassés, who followed a mysterious stranger overboard, and down to the bottom of the sea, where he found himself in the streets of Is. He saw, near at hand, the cathedral, and entered. The church was full of people, dressed in an ancient fashion. The priest was saying mass, and, as the fisherman entered, he cried, 'Dominus vobiscum!' No one replied, and the priest repeated the words thrice or more, in a tone of keenest supplication, almost of agony. The fisherman wondered why no one answered, and turned toward his neighbor, but was horrified to see that the man was dead—a skeleton in clothes. The man next beyond was dead, also; every one in the church was a thing of bones. The fisherman uttered a cry of terror, and rushed out into the street, followed by a strange, whispering sigh of grief, which seemed to come from all that dreadful congregation. In the porch, a man caught him by the arm, demanding to know why he had not replied to the priest the customary, 'Et cum spiritu tuo,' and explaining that, if he had but said those words, the mass of is would have been completed, and the city saved.

“That is one tale; there are others much like it. In another, the visitor should have given a coin when the offrande was taken up. One coin from a living person, given in free will, would have saved the city. In all the tales, you will find that some voluntary good act, some participation of a living man in the dead city's mass, is necessary to work the great miracle. They are but tales! Who knows the truth, monsieur le capitaine? Would God it were I! This is part of the city's punishment: that not even those who would gladly die for her, may know how her salvation should be worked.

“That the city of Is once stood here, on our north coast, and was great and prosperous, and that it was destroyed for its sins by the sea, I can and shall prove to all men; for I have many proofs to offer—many, many proofs. But, for the city itself, I can do—nothing.”

He rose to his feet, and made a gesture outward, toward the sea. “She lies there, monsieur le capitaine!” said he, and his voice had risen, and his great eyes were flashing; “she lies there, and I, who should be her king, may do nothing to aid her.”

Then, all at once, his little flame of passion died, and he dropped back once more into his chair, covering his face with his hands. “I, who would die to aid her!” he said, under his breath, brokenly. “Oh, monsieur, the plight of Is, and her sins and her suffering, are upon my soul, and it is heavy. What can I do for her? I can tell the world as much as it is best to tell, but I cannot raise the dead. I am a very lonely man, monsieur le capitaine. I have no friends, and I see few people. They do not understand, and they think that I am mad—I, who should wear a crown, and sit upon a throne.” He ceased speaking, for his voice was beyond control.

Captain Berkeley looked away, frowning and twisting uneasily in his chair. It is not a comfortable thing to see a man overcome by grief. But, along with his discomfort and his British helplessness in the face of anything like a scene, there came, for a moment, something like anger and disillusionment, a brief breaking of the spell that was upon him. “The man is mad,” he said to himself, “quite mad; and I am nearly as mad to sit here listening to such stuff. A city to rise from the sea—my word!” And he scowled, sullenly, at the bowed head across the table, and at the thin, white, nervous fingers clasped above.

This was her husband, he said to himself, in almost savage disgust, this sobbing bundle of nerves, who shut himself away from the world, away from her, to dream mad dreams of ancient miracles, and to prattle of impossible cities that should rise from the sea. This was her husband!

And then, at the thought of her, his own trouble came upon him like a flood; the recollection of his irretrievable ruin with her—for he knew that he could never explain away this last difficulty, that he could never show her that it was all a strange blunder, never stand, in her eyes, an honorable man. It came over him in a sudden, great flood, and he bowed his head to it, grimly, not like the overwrought man across the table, but with stern bitterness. And he sat thus, with his head in his hands, for a long time, quite still.

It was the dashing of water upon the windows that roused him. Outside, the wind and the sea had been rising swiftly, and the sky was covered with mottled clouds, thin and high. The rhythmic sigh of the waves had grown to a loud roar, and, now and then, the spray from a wave, dashing higher up the cliff than its fellows, was caught by the wind, and whirled against the face of the castle.

The Marquis de Kersalec lifted his pale face, and his eyes were dull and absent. “Was that a wave?” said he. “The sea is mounting. We shall have a storm, presently.”

He rose to his feet, and moved, a bit wearily, across the room. “I must ask you to pardon me,” he said; “I fear I have been rude. I see so few people, nowadays, that my manners become lamentable. Would you care to look at the manuscripts? I have some very valuable ones, quite unique. You will understand better what I said, as to having indisputable proofs of the existence and life of the city of Is. You may also be interested in this armor and these vessels and weapons. The Roman influence is curiously plain in their design.”

Then, when Captain Berkeley had looked over all the collection—and there were many strange and interesting things—and was making his adieus, the marquis looked into his eyes, with a little, sad, whimsical smile. “No,” said he, “do not thank me. I should like to thank you for coming. You are not quite like the others. I fancy you have been interested. You are thinking, for the moment, that I am a little mad, or very mad, as you like; but you will neither laugh nor show that you are bored. No, you are not like the others.”

He paused an instant, looking at the younger man, wistfully. “You have not had a very happy life, monsieur,” he went on. “I do not know why, and I do not know in what particulars you have been unhappy, but you bear the marks of grief. Perhaps, that is why you will not laugh at what you call, in your mind, my dreams. One sorrow respects another, and we both have our sorrows. Good-bye, monsieur le capitaine. Yes, I thank you for coming to see me.”

X

While Captain Berkeley was closeted with the marquis, hearing strange tales, and seeing strange things, the old Earl of Strope appeared in the garden, and lifted his disreputable deer-stalker's cap to the marquise, who still sat, beside her little table, on the terrace above.

“Good morning, madame,” said he. “I have seized this particular time to call, because I knew that I should not be forestalled, or interrupted, by that tiresome guest of mine, who has become a great trial to me. Nowadays, I never find you, or the countess, alone; Robert Berkeley is always hanging about. I think I shall send him back to Paris.”

He mounted the steps, smiling with satisfaction, and sat down in one of the chairs of osier, which creaked under his great frame. Then, he drew down his eyebrows, and looked sharply at the marquise de Kersalec.

“What is the matter?” he demanded, in his abrupt tone. “You have been weeping.” And he scowled at her, in a quite intimidating fashion.

“Well, if I 'ave,” said the marquise, with some spirit, “'it is ver' bad mannaires for you to—to notice, an' to—to speak of it. Any'ow, it is nothing—nothing at all.”

“I don't believe it,” said the earl, frankly; “and, as for my manners, I make no pretense of having any. Old men may take refuge behind their white hairs; they have peculiar privileges. It annoys me to see you unhappy. Ah, here comes the countess! I am doubly fortunate to find you both; and without that irritating Berkeley person in the way. Countess, I hope you are in a very good humor. The marquise has just been snapping at me, most malevolently.”

Varvara zu Ehrenstern sat down, upon the broad balustrade of the terrace, and laughed gaily. “Oh, I—I am in an excellent humor, sir,” said she; “I was never better. We are going to have a storm, a proper one; do you hear that wind? A storm always fills me with pleasant excitement. I like big, strong things—and people,” she added, laughing again. “But you must not mind Aurélie. She has an abominable temper, really. What paper have you, there, chérie? Oh!”

The earl noted the sudden change of tone, and looked at the newspaper which still lay upon the little table. “Ah, said he; “one of those scandal-mongers?” He took it up, idly, and glanced down its columns. Then, all at once, he gave a sudden exclamation, and looked up sharply at the two women.

“Yes,” said the Countess zu Ehrenstern, in answer to his glance, “there is something about your friend, Captain Berkeley, there. I dare say the thing is no news to you.”

The old gentleman read the article through, slowly, and, as he read, his face flushed, and his great white eyebrows began to twitch, and to work up and down, after their fashion. Then, when he had finished, he crumpled the sheet in one of his strong hands, and shook it, angrily, in the air. “Did you believe that?” he demanded, fiercely; “did you believe that contemptible slander? did you?”

The countess shrugged her shoulders, and smiled. “Oh, quant à ça,” said she, “It all tallies with Captain Berkeley's general reputation, doesn't it? It is rather nasty, of course. Still, one must not expect men of the world to be quite—Galahads, as you yourself said the other day. Aurélie was a little disturbed by it, but, then, Aurélie is such a difficult sort of person to live up to—such a story-book sort of person!” She turned toward the other woman, laughing.

But the marquise's eyes were fixed upon the earl. They were bright with excitement, and her face was pale. “It is not—true?” she asked, slowly; “not—true?” And her eyes never left the earl's face.

“It is a vile and malignant lie!” cried the old gentleman, shaking the crumpled paper in his fist. “It is a poisonous, contemptible slander; and it would give me great pleasure to lay hands upon the cur who wrote it. I hope it will never come to Robert Berkeley's eyes. It would hurt him more than I can say.”

The Marquise de Kersalec drew a sharp breath. “It—it 'as come to 'is eyes,” she said, very low. “Me, I 'ave show' it to 'im—this morning.”

The old gentleman dropped the crumpled paper to the ground, and his great white eyebrows drew down again. “Then, you believed it, too, madame?” said he; “you, too?”

The marquise made a forlorn gesture with both her hands, and her eyes never left his—they were very wide and dark, and full of a distress which the earl was too angry to see. “'E would not deny it!” she cried, piteously. “'E said it was true—true!”

“Deny it?” roared the earl, in a savage tone; “deny it? Damme, madame, he couldn't deny it! It is his cursedly quixotic sense of honor!” He struck the little table beside him with his open palm, and the table jumped and creaked.

“The man that wretched screed gossips about,” he went on, “the man who broke that woman's heart, and acted like a—yes, like a cad, though he was otherwise a gentleman and a brave officer, was Berkeley's friend, Reverley, who died a few weeks ago, and whom Berkeley loved like a brother. Berkeley himself did all that a human being could do to patch the thing up, and to get Reverley to do the proper thing, but to no purpose. Deny it? Of course, he wouldn't deny it, and lay it upon a dead man! That cursed sheet has got the story as badly twisted as most of this abominable society gossip is twisted. I did not suppose any one ever believed a tale from such a source.”

He rose, still frowning, and took up his cap and stick. “That wretched thing has spoiled my temper for the day,” said he, “that, and the fact that you ladies would believe it at once. If you will pardon me, I will go home. I am not pleasant company when I am angry.”

The Marquise de Kersalec gave a protesting cry, and held out one hand, as if she would stop him; but the earl bowed, and went down the steps and through the garden, holding himself very stiff, and not looking back. Varvara zu Ehrenstern sat upon the balustrade of the terrace, watching him, and there was a light of excitement, of admiration, in her eyes. She even smiled.

“Isn't he fine?” she cried. “Isn't he splendid when he is angry! Of course, I am sorry he went away, but it was worth while to see him in a rage. I should like once to see him angry at a man, genuinely angry, you know. It would be something to watch.” She turned toward the other woman, laughing; but the Marquise de Kersalec had dropped her head upon her arms, over the little table, and was sobbing, very quietly.

“Why, you goose!” cried the Countess zu Ehrenstern; and she slipped an arm about the bowed shoulders, raising the other's head to her bosom, in the tender way women have. “You silly little dear of a goose! He will be over it to-morrow. He meant nothing; it was all his childish temper. And he was angry at the paper, anyhow, not at you—at us. Oh, my dear, my dear, whenever will you learn not to take things three times as seriously as they are meant? Fancy weeping over the earl's bad temper!”

But the marquise shook the head that rested against the other's shoulder. “You do not understan',” she said. “I do not weep over the earl's bad temper—though 'e 'ad reason for it, yes. Oh, dearest, dearest, then it was not true, that dreadful story? It was all a lie?”

“Yes,” said the countess, stroking the black hair, “yes, it would seem that it was all a lie. I am glad.”

“Glad!” murmured the Marquise de Kersalec; “glad! Oh, more than that, glad is so little!” She pressed her face against the countess's shoulder, and it whitened a trifle. “I—I made 'im say it was true,” she said. “I called 'im—ah, dreadful things! I made 'im say that 'e 'ad lied to me—and 'e said it. 'E was willing that I should theenk so of 'im, to shield a dead man. But 'e is brave; oh, 'e is brave!” She turned again in her friend's arms, looking up into her face. “Do you love 'im ver' much, mignonne?” she demanded. “Are you quite sure that you love 'im ver' much, as much as 'e deserves—as much as 'e love' you?”

“Love him!” cried the Countess zu Ehrenstern, laughing amazedly; “love him! What makes you think I love him at all? And what possible reason have you for thinking that he loves me? Oh, child, child, when will you grow up? You run away with such mad notions, and coddle them, all by yourself, till you're quite persuaded that they are true. What makes you think that Captain Berkeley and I care about each other?” She laughed again.

But the marquise did not laugh with her; she only looked very anxiously into her eyes, as if searching for something behind the pretense of fun. “Don't joke,” she pleaded, shaking her head. “It is no joke, that. It is ver', ver' serious. I—I know that 'e loves you—it does not matter 'ow I know it—an', if you should be only playing with 'im—only tormenting 'im——“”

“As he has played with and tormented women all his life,” broke in the Countess zu Ehrenstern.

“I am not so certain of that—now,” said the marquise. “Per'aps those othaire tales were lies, like this one. Per'aps we 'ave been wronging 'im all the time. Oh, mignonne, I 'urt im, cruelly! I made 'im say that 'e 'ad lied to me, wen 'e 'ad tol' the truth. I—ah, it was ver' dreadful! Make it up to 'im, Varvara mia. Be ver' kin' to 'im. me, 'e will nevvaire forgive; 'e cannot forgive me, bot you can make 'im glad again, so that 'e will forget the othaires. It does not matter about—me.”

She turned away her head, but Varvara zu Ehrenstern caught it suddenly between her hands, and held it, looking into the great, clouded eyes for a long time, and her own eyes held a strange expression—startled, almost frightened, and very much puzzled. Then, she shook her own head, laughing once more.

“Oh, no, no, that is impossible!” she said, as if to herself. “For a moment, I almost thought—child, you frighten one, at times, with your absurd seriousness; you give one the strangest notions. I am going to try to cultivate a sense of humor in you. But that would seem quite hopeless, would it not?”

She moved away toward the door of the château, but the marquise held her, by one arm. “You 'ave not answer' my question,” said she. “You 'ave not tell me if you—care for 'im really, or not.”

The countess looked down at her, oddly, for a moment, and stroked the black hair with her free hand. And she looked away, across the gardens, oddly still.

“I will not tell you,” she said, at last. “You've really no right to ask, of course. Perhaps—perhaps, I don't know; that is very possible. I wonder why you should think that he cares for me.” She smiled back over her shoulder, as she went through the door. “When he asks me if I care,” she said, “I'll tell him the truth—if I know it. Perhaps, I don't know it, yet.”

It was an hour later, and the Marquise de Kersalec still sat beside her little table on the terrace, in spite of the driving clouds and the mounting wind, when Captain Berkeley came out from his call upon the marquis. He was for passing, with a bow, but the marquise rose, and stood in his way, a tragic-eyed figure of woe. Captain Berkeley halted, but he would not meet her eyes.

“Oh, monsieur le capitaine!” she said, very softly, “will you—can you forgive me still aggain? I 'ave wrong' you once more. I know it, now.”

“Why, madame,” said Captain Berkeley, with a sad, whimsical smile, “it has become a habit. But I may not complain; for, if you think ill of me unjustly, for one thing, doubtless I deserve it for other things.”

“I shall not think ill of you aggain,” said she. “I 'ave learn' not to believe evverything they say; I—oh, monsieur, I did not weesh to believe it. I did not wan' to theenk you w'at—w'at I 'ave call' you. Will you believe that, monsieur, will you?” She looked up at Captain Berkeley, and a wistful, uncertain little smile began at the corners of her lips, and trembled there.

Captain Berkeley met her eyes, and his breath caught, so that he looked quickly away again. “I will believe anything you say, madame,” said he, “as always, indeed, I should like to believe this, how you came to know that what you read in the newspaper yonder is not true, I cannot fancy, but I am glad—for my own sake—and sorry, for the sake of another, that you know the truth. It gave me little pleasure to lie to you, madame, to exile myself from your good-will.”

“I know,” she murmured; “oh, I know!”

“Do you, madame?” said Captain Berkeley, again with his sad, whimsical smile.

“An' I know that you are a ver' brave man, monsieur,” she went on, looking into his eyes; “braver than any man I know. She—she knows abbout it, too. I do not theenk she—quite believed w'at was in the journal, like me. I theenk she was not angry, like me. It would have been ver', ver' terrible if she 'ad been angry like me, yes? Me—I—it did not make so much difference. Monsieur, I will 'elp you with 'er, as I 'ave promise'. I will 'elp you all I can, to—atone for 'urting you.”

“Oh, madame, madame!” cried Captain Berkeley.

XI

A few days later, Captain Berkeley, walking over the moor between Kersalec and Château Kerval, happened upon the Countess zu Ehrenstern. It was near the little chapel, and the countess was sitting on the ground, beside the old shrine of Notre Dame de St. They, with its tiny fountain of stagnant water, and the quaint old stone-carved madonna, who bore about her neck strings of beads and of copper medallions, for the chance pilgrim. The countess had taken from the statue's neck a medallion, leaving a coin, in payment, on the stone shelf below, and she was holding the trinket in her hand as Captain Berkeley came up to where she sat. It seemed to him that she looked rather tired and worn, and he was surprised, for he had never before seen her so.

She saw him coming, and held out her hand to him, smiling. “I am very glad to see you,” she said. “You come at a good time—for me, that is. I have been having a fit of papillons noirs—what do you call them—blues? I have been trying to decide something of importance, which must not be decided lightly, and—why, it has been very, very difficult to decide.”

Captain Berkeley sat down on the heather, and knocked the ashes out of his pipe. “And my coming has helped the decision?” he inquired. “I rather think I feel flattered. I have a pleasing sense of importance.”

But the countess looked up at him swiftly, as if there were something unconsciously significant behind his words.

“No,” she said, after a moment, and turned her eyes away, across the sea. “No, you—I have not decided, yet. No, your coming had nothing—I was only glad to be relieved from thinking—and glad to see you, on general grounds. Somehow, we seem not to have seen much of each other very lately.”

“That is so,” said Captain Berkeley, in a tone of slight surprise; “that is so; we have not. I wonder why.”

“I wonder,” echoed the Countess zu Ehrenstern. “I have not seen you, have I,” she went on, “since your call upon the marquis, the other day? Do you still think he is mad?”

Captain Berkeley kicked at the turf, with a sort of resentment, of irritability. “Mad? Of course, he is mad! He must be mad, or the sanity of all the rest of us is mania. Fancy a man who believes that a city is buried intact out there, under the sea, and that it will rise again, by some extraordinary miracle! Oh, yes: he is mad, right enough.”

“Oh,” said the countess, “I don't fancy that he quite believes it will actually rise again. He has a Breton's dreams of it, and a Breton's dreaming hopes that are not properly hopes, but only fancies. When a man has spent all his life in the study of a dead city—of its history and legends—he is apt to begin, bit by bit, to put faith in the most improbable of those legends. It is quite natural. At any rate, he showed you some odd things, I suppose.”

“Cursedly odd!” said Captain Berkeley; and kicked again at the turf, with a resentful heel. “That was the worst of it. One can't laugh away some of the things I saw with my own eyes. They're there, I tell you,” he went on, with a rising voice. “The man almost had me believing his mad tale! It all seems great rot now, when one can look back at it, sanely, and in the light of deliberate common-sense; but—he hypnotized me, somehow. The most utter nonsense sounded reasonable enough while he was telling it. But he's mad, quite mad!”

The countess smiled at him, shaking her head. “You think that, because you don't understand,” said she. “I told the earl once that you English had no temperament, that you could not feel certain things to be true without demanding proof. You say that the marquis is mad, in self-defense, because he has troubled you a little, shaken your poise. You hate that, you English, more than anything else.”

“Do you believe it all?” demanded Captain Berkeley; “do you? You're no dreaming recluse. You could shake me more than could twenty like the marquis. Do you believe those things?”

The countess shrugged her shoulders. “There are many strange things,” she said, as the Marquis de Kersalec had said, before her. “Who knows where truth may not be? Aurélie believes many things at which you would laugh, but who would dream of calling her mad? Belief is a quality of the mind, my friend; it is not a matter of logic, or reason.”

Captain Berkeley laughed, a tender, indulgent laugh, as one laughs at the quaint fancies of a child. “Yes,” said he, “the marquise believes many odd things. That is because she is a Bretonne, I suppose. She believes that the dead come out of their graves, every year, to warm themselves about the fires that are lighted on St. John's Eve. And she believes that her kinswoman, Ahés, King Gradlon's daughter, was turned into a mermaid, when she slipped from the horse into the sea, and that she rides on the waves down there, before a storm, to warn the fishermen. Oh, yes; she believes no end of the popular superstitions, but she is not mad, because—why, because she—she's a child, you know, in most ways. She was brought up on superstition. She has never seen the world, outside of her home and a convent. Oh, bless you, no, she is not mad, or anything like it. One would not have her more practical. One would not have her lose her faith in the fairy tales. She would not be the same, somehow.”

“No,” assented Varvara zu Ehrenstern; “she would have lost something more than belief. She would have lost a part of herself, a certain share of her exquisite loveliness. I hope she will be a child, always. Certainly, she will be until she falls in love with some one—and, even then, if she falls in love with the right one—the one to appreciate her, not to crush her.”

“You seem quite to forget,” said Captain Berkeley, “that the marquise is a married woman. You speak as if she were a girl—free to fall in love with any one she likes.”

“Oh, Captain Berkeley,” cried the countess, laughing, “is it, then, only the free who fall in love? I had thought differently. Is it only the free who—fall in love, captain?”

Captain Berkeley turned slightly red. “Why, as for that, countess,” said he, “I must confess that I have known it to be sadly otherwise. Love will not be bid or bound. Love comes often when it should not, or when it is unwelcome. Still, I do not think of such love in connection with the Marquise de Kersalec. It seems not to belong to her. It seems—the very thought of it—somehow, to profane her. The marquise was made for happiness and contentment, countess; for all the lovely things in life, not for tragedy.”

“Who knows?” said the countess again, in a musing, absent tone. “Oh, yes, yes; you are right! Such things are not for her world—passion and unhappiness and such—they should pass her by. Indeed, I hope they may, for I know somewhat of them, captain, and they do not make for peace of soul. They age one.”

Captain Berkeley lifted his grave face, and, for the moment, it showed haggard in the afternoon sun—as it were, from reminiscence. “Aye,” said he, nodding, “they age one. Yet, you bear no scars from them, no scars that one may see. Fate has been good to you in one thing, at least.”

“My scars are within, captain,” she said. “They burn—at times—without showing.”

Then, after a moment, she laughed, clasping her knee with both hands, and leaning back on the soft turf—laughed consumedly, as if greatly amused. “Tragedy, tragedy, monsieur!” she cried. “Here we sit in God's good, golden sunshine, on this beautiful day, prating of our griefs and our wounds; sighing like furnaces when we should be laughing for pure joie de vivre. Griefs!” She put on a childlike smile, in imitation of the Marquise de Kersalec, and turned wide eyes upon Captain Berkeley. “Me, I 'ave no griefs.” she declared, sweetly. “I am al-ways 'appy, monsieur—al-ways 'appy. And you,” she went on, in her own voice, “I don't believe you ever had a grief in your whole life. You don't show it. You're too well-groomed and prosperous-looking to have had griefs. You look as if you played cricket a little better than other people, or rowed better, or something like that, and as if that was all you cared for.” And, with this surprising absurdity—for he looked nothing of the sort, save in being tanned and well made—she beamed pleasantly upon her companion, and fashioned a little boutonnière of purple heather for his jacket.

“That is quite true,” said he, gravely; “I play better cricket than anybody I know. And, if that is not enough to fill a chap's life, I don't know what is. I say, but that smell of goëmons is rather fine, you know,” and he sniffed, delightedly.

But the Countess zu Ehrenstern held up a very small handkerchief, and made a face. “It is horrible! If you like that, you must be a Breton at heart. They say that no one else can bear the odor.”

Down at the foot of the cliffs, two hundred feet below, some peasant lads were collecting goëmons, the long, ribbonlike weed which the tide brings in from the deep sea, and leaves on the rocks. There was a great heap of it, drying there in the sun, and the wind bore up its pungent reek to the cliff's top.

“I like it,” said Captain Berkeley; “I like all manner of sea smells, even the worst of the low tide ones that most people cannot bear. Do you know why the Bretons about here collect that stuff? You'll see heaps of it, all along the coast. They dry it in the sun, and burn it. Then, they send the ashes to the chemical works, where they are turned into iodine and bromides, and the like. It's a very useful industry, if you please.”

“It is a very nasty one,” declared the countess; “I've quarreled about it with Aurélie. She, too, loves the odor. I call it most indelicate of her.”

A little, red-sailed fishing boat crept around from the Baie de Douarnenez, making for the Raz de Sein. Her sail flapped in the lazy breeze, and one of the men on board sang magnificently, in a high tenor voice, some interminable chanson of the coast. The voice came up to the top of the cliff, made very thin and faint and sweet by the distance, like a horn that is sounded far away.

“There's some one else who has no griefs,” said Captain Berkeley, watching the tiny boat; “some one else with an attack of joie de vivre!”

But the countess seemed, capriciously, to have turned serious again. “Ah, he's only pretending,” said she, “like—like every one else. It's only the sunshine and the smooth sea, and, maybe, a good haul of fish, that make him happy, for the moment. He is only pretending to forget that the Raz de Sein is ahead of him, and must be passed, with all its ugly currents and hidden rocks and such. He's only pretending to forget that he had a quarrel with his wife this morning, before he left home, and that the baby—the baby died a month ago.”

“Well, then,” insisted Captain Berkeley, “I say that he is jolly right to pretend. He's jolly right to take all the fun he can get, and to forget all that isn't—isn't fun. And, further,” he went on, in a tone of complaint, “further, I should like to state that you are the most morose and depressing person I have met in a good many days, and I'm sorry I happened upon you. You're in a fair way to give me papillons noirs, as well as yourself.”

“Ah, now, I mustn't do that, must I?” said she, laughing. “You will be avoiding me, after this, if I make you blue. Let us talk about something more cheerful. What nice things are you going to do when you leave here? I suppose the earl won't be able to keep you long in such a forsaken spot. Where are you going when you leave Château Kerval?”

“Leave—Château Kerval?” said Captain Berkeley, in a strange voice; and she could see a swift change pass over his face, as if the thought came to him with a shock; “leave—Château Kerval? Why, I don't believe—I'm afraid it hadn't occurred to me at all that I must be leaving before long. It has all been so fine here that I'd taken no thought of going away. Jove! I—I shall hate to go, you know.”

He fell silent, frowning, and chafing his hands upon his knees, and, for a time, he quite forgot the presence of the countess, while his mind dwelt upon the waste which lay beyond these present days, and he considered what going away from Kerval must mean. It was quite true that the idea had never before occurred to him, and he faced it, at last, with a dismay which appalled him.

“Why, I might never see her again!” he cried, to a panic-stricken inner self; “I couldn't come back, anyhow, till the earl returns, a year from now. A year! Who knows what might happen in a year, or in half of it? Not see her for a year? Good God, what could I be doing to make the time pass? A year!” And, from that, he fell to thinking how hopeless must be his state, both now and after that year—or after many years, save in one event upon which he would not allow himself to dwell; of how hopelessly beyond him she must always be, beyond even a hand's touch, an eye's caress, the littlest betrayal of how dear to him she was. She must never know, he said very fiercely to himself, never even suspect; and he gave a bitter laugh as he pictured her amazed contempt when she should discover that he had dared lift his eyes to her otherwise than as a friend.

But, in all his bitterness and utter absence of any hope, he shrank desperately from the thought of going away. “Just to be near her!” he cried, in his tense silence. “Just to see her, sometimes, to know that she is well, to be of a little service to her; maybe to touch her hand, once in a way, hear her voice, watch her eyes change and go soft, watch her smile just to be near her, never letting her know what—what she must never know!

“A year!” he cried, aloud, gripping his hands savagely upon his knees. “A year? It is impossible! I can't! I tell you, I can't!”

“What can you not?” inquired Varvara zu Ehrenstern.

Captain Berkeley gave a quick start; he had quite forgotten that she was near. “I beg pardon!” he said, and forced a laugh, when he saw that she was watching him very curiously. “I beg pardon; I am subject to brief spells of insanity. Please don't mind me. I—was thinking about how it would seem to leave here. I find that I don't in the very least wish to go—not in the very least.”

“No?” said she. Then, after a pause, she went on, “I wonder why; I wonder just why.” Her eyes did not leave his, and it seemed to Captain Berkeley that their curiosity had become more serious, that they asked a question of him deeper than, and beyond, her words. It seemed to him that a sort of excitement grew upon her—something which he did not follow or comprehend.

“I wonder just why,” she said, again.

“Why,” said Captain Berkeley, smiling into her eyes, “It would seem most easy of understanding. Should not a man be unwilling to leave the Pointe du Van while the Pointe du Van is graced by—is graced as it is graced nowadays?” And he made a little bow.

But the countess shook her head, frowning, for an instant, at his tone of banter. Then, she leaned toward him, eagerly. “Why?” she demanded again, and a flush spread upon her cheeks.

“There is that upon the Pointe du Van,” said Captain Berkeley, unsmiling, “which I find it strangely hard to leave behind me. It holds one, somehow,” he went on; “it makes one oddly weak and—foolish.”

“It is not the sea?” she suggested.

“No, countess,” said Captain Berkeley.

“Nor the heather, nor the rocks, nor the storms; nor these strange Bretons and their legends?” she asked.

“No, countess,” said Captain Berkeley, again; “it is none of those things.”

“Then,” said she, still watching him, “then, it is some one who is here, upon the Pointe du Van, some one whom you—who holds you. Oh, Captain Berkeley, they say that you are a very brave man; they tell wonderful tales of your courage. Where is your bravery now, captain? If you care about this—person who is upon the Pointe du Van, why don't you tell her so? What stands in your way? Why don't you take her with you, when you go? it may be,” she said, and her voice dropped a little, as if she spoke to herself, “it may be that you could take her with you. It may be that she would come to care for you, if she thought you—you cared enough. It may be that she's just wavering be that she's just wavering between safety and—peril. It may be that you could save her, if you're very strong and sure.”

Captain Berkeley looked up, in swift alarm. It could not be that the countess knew, he said to himself; it could not be that any one knew. He had hidden it all too well for that, surely. He did not, in the least, understand what she meant by peril and safety, and by the possibility of his taking the woman he loved with him from the Pointe du Van. He was too much concerned, his mind was too full of the necessity for misleading her, if she had any little glimmer of the truth, to pay close attention to her words.

”Alas countess!” said he, bowing again, “you would lure me to my undoing with false hopes, shipwreck me under a blue sky. Bravery? I've none of it. I'll not exchange a half-sweet misery for a certain grief, not I! Leave me my misery—since it is half-sweet.”

He rose to his feet, laughing gently, and brushed the bits of heather and sand from his elbows. It was quite time to escape, he was saying to himself; the ground had become too dangerous.

“May I walk back to Kersalec with you?r” he asked; “you must not sit here; the wind grows cold.”

The countess, also, rose and there was a strange smile about her lips. She half lifted her hands, and dropped them again to her sides. “Soit!” said she, in the tone of one who accepts some decision; and the strange smile seemed to be fixed upon her lips. But, after a moment, she went on: “No, I will not go back yet. Leave me here for a while; I wish to be alone. The wind is not too cold.”

She raised her eyes to his, and looked at him for quite a time. “I told you, an hour ago,” she continued, “that your happening along would have no effect upon a problem which was vexing me—I am not so sure, now. I think you've settled the problem, Captain Berkeley.”

The captain shook his head, with a puzzled frown. “I don't follow at all,” said he; “you're beyond me. I don't follow.”

“No,” she agreed; “you don't follow. Some day, you may; but, just now, you don't follow at all.”

Then, when he had gone away, she sat down again, upon the short heather, and taking the little copper medallion of Notre Dame de St. They from the cord that had bound it to her wrist, she threw it over the cliff's edge, and watched it fall, winking in the sunlight, to the rocks, far below, and to the sucking waves.

“There goes a so-called immortal soul,” said the Countess zu Ehrenstern, in Russian.

Then, for a moment, she looked back over the moor, to the receding figure of Captain Berkeley. “I am not quite sure,” she continued, slowly; “but I think—I think you could have saved it, my friend.”

XII

“Theeswoman, monsieur,” began the Marquise de Kersalec, choosing the very reddest rose in sight, “thees woman w'at you 'ave tell me abbout the othaire day, the woman you—love—will you not tell me more of 'er? I am so curious, me, jus' like a cat!”

She stuck the reddest rose in her hair over one ear, and turned her head experimentally back and forth, to make sure that the flower would stay. “You will see,” she went on, “that I say jus' the woman you—love, not Varvara zu Ehrenstern. Of course, it is not Varvara, nevvaire!” And she treated herself to a little gurgle of laughter.

“What do you wish to know about her, madame?' asked Captain Berkeley.

The marquise made an open gesture with two very small hands. “Evverything,” said she, with a fine moderation; “evverything! W'at she look' like, an' 'ow she speak', an' 'ow she is so differen' from all othaire women—I mean,” she amended, hastily, “I mean from mos' othaire women, that you should love 'er so. Tell me abbout 'er, monsieur!”

“'What she looks like?'” said Captain Berkeley, softly, and there began to come into his voice a sort of thrill. “Why, madame, she is the loveliest thing that God has made. She is lovelier than those flowers, yonder, daintier and fresher and more exquisite! 'What does she look like?' Oh, madame, she is the most beautiful woman in Europe!”

The Marquise de Kersalec gave a little, low-voiced cry of protest. “Monsieur, monsieur!'” said she. “The mos' beautiful woman in Europe? Oh, monsieur, is she more beautiful than the Princess Adela? Is she more beautiful than Amélie de Colonne? Is she as beautiful as Isabeau de Monsigny? Ah, she cannot be! Why, Varvara is lovely, but— Ah, no, no, monsieur, I did not mean to say Varvara; of course, it is not Varvara. I will not say 'er name aggain—jus' 'the woman you—love.'”

“I have seen all those women you mention, madame,” said Captain Berkeley, “and Isabeau de Monsigny is one of the best friends I have; but—I think the woman I—love is the most beautiful of them all.”

“That is biccause you love 'er, monsieur,” said the marquise, very softly.

“And how does she speak?” said he, and the low thrill in his voice deepened. “She speaks as no one else I have ever known speaks; as one would say that a great singer should speak—and as a few great singers do; so that one plays little tricks upon her to make her, for a moment, gay or sad or even angry, or, best of all, tender—just to hear her wonderful voice change with her mood. Every word she speaks is a caress, madame, though she doesn't know it. Every golden tone of hers haunts one afterward, in one's dreams. Ah, how does she speak? Oh, madame, there are many women who can move a man to passion, for that is the law of life, but there is no selfishness in the love She draws. One would give one's life to her service, gladly; kissing her feet that one was permitted to give it, but asking nothing in return—asking nothing—nothing.” His voice went lower and slower, and trailed off into silence, and he sat, leaning forward slightly, clasping and unclasping his locked hands, and staring across the garden to the barren moors.

But the Marquise de Kersalec leaned back in her seat, with a little sigh, and pressed her hands over her eyes. Her cheeks were very much flushed. “I—I 'ave nevvaire 'eard any one speak—like that,” she said, uncertainly, “nevvaire biffore. Oh, monsieur, 'ow you mus' love 'er, thees woman! 'ow you mus' love 'er!”

“Very greatly, madame,” said he, not looking toward her; “very greatly—but I ask nothing from her.”

“Not—not 'er love, monsieur?” she asked.

“That least of all, madame,” said Captain Berkeley. “I may not ask for her love.”

She gave a soft, inarticulate cry of pity and distress. “Ah, monsieur,” she murmured, “it is so bad as that? You may not ask for 'er love, monsieur? I am—so sorry! Does she love some one else, monsieur?”

“I do not know, madame,” said Captain Berkeley; “I have thought that she does, and I have thought otherwise; I do not know. But I may not ask for her love.”

And then, because he had been for a long time holding himself very hard in hand, and because the strain was very great, a sudden fit of nervous shivering came over him, and he set his teeth, and gripped his hands, to force it back. “Oh, madame, madame!” he cried; “will you not speak of something else?r Will you force me to speak of her, always?”

“But w'at, monsieur,” she persisted, as if she had not heard him: “w'at if evverything which stan' between you—evverything w'ich keep' you from telling 'er that you—you love 'er, should go away? Strange things 'appen; evvery day they 'appen. W'at if thees trouble should—should pass? W'at then, monsieur?”

Captain Berkeley looked up, with quick, wide eyes, and an eager laugh broke from him. “What then?” he cried, in a voice that shook; “what then, madame? Why, then, I'd go to her, and I'd hold out my arms that have starved for her, and I'd say, 'Oh, my queen! Come away from all this loneliness and cold and sorrow that have been over us so long; come away with me, and let me make you happy. There's a great, broad world out yonder that you don't know about. It's full of light and music and gaiety. Come out there with me, and let me take you to the places I know so well. I want to see how much nicer they are with you beside me. Come! Yes,” he went on, nodding his head, excitedly, “yes, that is what I'd say to her; and she—she'd come,” he said, with a gulp. “Let's pretend that she'd come. And we'd go everywhere together—Nice and Cannes and Bordighera, in the Winter; and Cairo and Algiers and Italy, in the Spring; the lakes and Homburg and Baden and Deauville and Scheveningen, in the Summer, with a month or two, now and then, in Paris and London and Vienna and Petersburg—all that just to begin with, for, when we had tired of Europe, we'd go East, and I'd show her a lot of queer places where the trippers don't go, and she'd want to buy tons of lamps and bric-à-brac and silk things, to take home with her—just as if she couldn't get them all quite as good on the rue de Rivoli. And, when we'd tired of even the East, and were sick of steamers, and of bribing customs officers, and of packing boxes, then we'd settle down in some jolly little place—I know where!—just the two of us, and rest. And I'd spend the time telling her just how beautiful she was; and she—oh, she'd be very polite, and tell me that I was as nice as she was beautiful, and—and we'd live happily ever after, just like the people in the story-books,” he concluded, triumphantly. “That's what we'd do!”

The Marquise de Kersalec clasped her small hands together, with a little murmur of delight. “Oh, monsieur!” she said, helplessly—as if there were no words for the splendor of his picture; “oh, monsieur! But the las' part would be the bes',” she declared, after a pause. “She would love that part mos', monsieur. One mus' grow ennuyé of cities, an' of traveling, an' all such gay theengs. She would love to go to the little place, allone with you, an' be tol'—an' be tol' that she was—beautiful, always.”

Then, for a while, she was silent. “I wondaire—” she said, at last.

“What do you wonder, madame?”

But the marquise shook her head, with a laugh which seemed, somehow, to have no mirth in it. “I did not mean to speak alloud,” said she. “I was wondering if, after all, it might be some one else, and not Varvara, at all—some one I nevvaire 'ave seen. Ah, no, no, it mus' be Varvara! of course, it is Varvara! Forgive me, monsieur! I was only theenking. You are not suppose' to 'ear. Monsieur,” after another pause, “jus' one theeng, monsieur. Does—does she know, thees woman? Does she know that you love 'er so?”

“No, madame!” said Captain Berkeley; “no, thank God! It would make her unhappy, and I would die rather than make her unhappy.”

“You are a—ver' brave man, monsieur,” said the Marquise de Kersalec, as she had said to him once before, “braver than any man I know, But, per'aps, you are cruel, al-so. Theenk 'ow proud she would be, 'ow proud any woman mus' be, to be lov' so by you. Theenk 'ow 'appy it would make 'er, even—even if there is something w'ich mus' keep 'er from you. Monsieur, you are so brave! Are you not a little cruel al-so?”

“Oh, madame, madame!” cried Captain Berkeley.

XIII

“Is this the morning,” demanded the Earl of Strope, over his fourth cup of coffee, “is this the morning on which we go to see the grottoes in the Baie des Trépassés?”

“It is,” said Captain Berkeley; “and, if we're going to get into the grottoes at all, we'd best look sharp about it, too. It is half an hour past low water, now. By the time we pick up the people at Kersalec, and get down to the rocks, across the bay, we shall have to race with the tide.”

“Plenty of time,” said the earl, comfortably; “when you're come to eighty year, you won't hurry your breakfast for anybody's grottoes—or anybody's tides, either. I've only to put on some hobnailed boots, and I'm quite ready.”

“Hobnailed boots are no good over wet rocks,” objected Captain Berkeley. “You'll slip, and break your neck, probably. I've put on tennis shoes, with' rubber soles, and I told the marquise and the countess, yesterday, to wear rubber soles.”

The earl growled. “This is evidently a garden-party,” said he, as he tramped out of the breakfast-room to find the hobnailed boots; “I shall bring my tennis bat. Will there be a tea tent?”

It was a hot, still morning—in that land where heat and stillness are almost unknown. There was a pearly mist, which hung over the moors, and cloaked the Pointe du Raz, across the bay. The sea crept in out of it, green, sluggish and oily, and broke, with a deadened splash, sucking along the rocks, as an ebb-tide sucks along the piles of a wharf. There were gulls that wailed, near at hand, but lost in the whiteness, and, somewhere over in Troguer, a cow lowed unhappily.

The earl, as they crossed the moor toward Kersalec, drew his shoulders together, with a movement of distaste. “I don't like this sort of a day,” said he; “it gets on my nerves; it makes me uncomfortable. It is the sort of day on which unpleasant things happen. I daresay, it sounds a bit absurd from a North Countryman, who is, of necessity, brought up on mists, but I'm genuinely afraid of them—hot mists, in particular. They're uncanny.”

Captain Berkeley laughed.

But the earl shook his white head, and would not be amused. “Is the marquis going with us?” he asked, after a pause.

“Yes,” said Captain Berkeley, with no appearance of enthusiasm; “yes, I saw him, for a few moments, yesterday, and he said he would go. Of course, he may have forgotten about it before this time; I rather hope he has. He shoves his troubles rather too much down one's throat—just as if one had no troubles of one's own. Melancholy is all very well, but I don't like to see it forced upon the public—anyhow, not when I'm the public. His temper has gone off, of late, too; he's very snappy, at times. Yesterday, something trivial annoyed him, and he turned on his wife about it. He didn't say much, but he was very nasty. I had to look away, and recite poetry, to keep my hands off him. It would have given me a pleasure that I should always have remembered to beat his face in.”

The earl raised his eyebrows. “I am a bit surprised at that,” said he. “De Kersalec must have been in a very bad way, or he would never have spoken sharply to his wife—and, above all, before a third person. With all his peculiarities, he has beautiful manners; that is the blood telling. He has more of the old-fashioned courtesy than any man I know. Oh, yes; he must have been very much annoyed. I dare say, he felt more cut up about it afterward than one would think. De Kersalec is a very curious man,” the earl went on, reflectively; “I have said so to you, many times before. He has altogether too many nerves, and too little body to put them in. I suppose those of us who are more normal have no idea of what a nervous temperament suffers, and of what a state of frenzy a man can be thrown into, all in a moment, if his nerves get a bit out of hand. I have seen people of the nervous temperament run amuck, and do the most extraordinary things. I've a sort of notion that de Kersalec is nearly at the end of his tether, physically: he works too hard, and lets his dreams prey too heavily upon his mind. He looked shocking bad when I saw him last; he couldn't keep his hands still, or his eyes, either. I should have said he had something on his mind—something new. I dare say, it was merely overwork and under-play, though. He won't live long.”

“I don't think he has been working so very hard of late,” objected Captain Berkeley; “he seems to go mooning about the château, or over the moors the greater part of the time. He is with Varvara zu Ehrenstern a great deal. He fancies that she's a kindred soul, or something of the sort, I think. They spend their time talking about dead people and masses and things. He seems to be very fond of her.”

The old gentleman looked up, swiftly. “You don't mean—” said he, and halted, working his great eyebrows up and down, thoughtfully. And, as they tramped along over the spongy heather, he held a curious, side-long eye upon his companion, as if something puzzled him. He had done Captain Berkeley the injustice of believing that his tone of indifference was assumed.

“I think I should not allow that, if I were you,” he ventured, by way of experiment. “Varvara zu Ehrenstern was to have been your especial property, as it were. I had some idea of making a match between you.”

“So has the Marquise de Kersalec, I believe,” said Captain Berkeley; “between you and the marquise, there would seem to be small hope of escape for the poor woman.”

The earl shook his white head again, but he asked no questions, for he had a great dislike of seeming curious.

So, they came past the tiny chapel of St. They, and across the deep cut in the moor, which lies beyond, and, finally, to Kersalec, where the marquis and marquise and the Countess zu Ehrenstern were waiting for them, on the landward terrace.

“Enfin!” cried the marquise. “We thought you were nevvaire coming; we 'ave wait' hours!” she affirmed, indignantly, illustrating the length of the hours with her two arms.

“The earl was greedy,” said Captain Berkeley; “he wouldn't leave his breakfast. Also, he had to put on those beautiful boots. Dear me! hadn't you noticed them? We thought it rather a shame that they should be standing idle about the castle, when they might as well he evoking your admiration. We put them on,” said he, in the tone of a street showman, “to give you a treat. Please do not feed or annoy the gentleman in them; he is part of the exhibition. Passing a bit farther along, we see——”

“'Passing a bit farther along,' you'll see a double murder committed, very shortly,” interrupted the Earl of Strope, “if you two flippant young persons don't let my boots alone. You have no respect for white hairs. But, I say, we must be getting on, you know, if we're to see those grottoes. It will take us half an hour, at least, from here, and the tide is rising, now.”

They went down, through the garden, and out of the south gate in the wall, to the little foot-path which veins the broad shoulder of the cliffs, and leads to the sands of the Baie des Trépassés.

On the beach, there were great heaps of goëmons, piled up, five feet by ten or twelve, to dry—a-reek with deep-sea odors and decay. The earl and Varvara passed them to windward, but Captain Berkeley sniffed with an appreciation that won him cries of applause from the marquise. There were little fisher boys—gosses, brown and sturdy; built for wind and sea, like their fathers' boats—bathing from the sands, but they ventured no more than waist-deep into that fair, bland place of death.

The waves came in, lone as the little bay was wide, straight and oily and unbroken, innocent to the eye, as the who splashed among them. One would not have said that wrecks came here, in dozens, scores, hundreds; and dead men, too—bits of them. Only, in that hot, white stillness, things whispered, out of sight in the mist, and passed, and whispered again. And there was a choked ringing of bells, very faint and deep-buried—or it might have been only the sucking of lazy water, among the rocks beyond.

Jut the Marquise de Kersalec caught at the hand of Varvara zu Ehrenstern, and drew a little nearer her side, hurrying her steps; and the old Earl of Strope brought his great shoulders together again, uncomfortably, and turned his iron face to the hidden sea, scowling. Even Captain Berkeley started and caught his breath, when a gull, wheeling unseen over their heads, wailed aloud, and the two women screamed in echo. The place was full of an intangible horror.

Once across the beach and among the rocks, with the cliffs of the Pointe du Raz looming over them, the marquis took the lead, since, of necessity, he best of them all, knew the route; and the others followed, two and two, Varvara zu Ehrenstern beside Captain Berkeley, and the marquise with the old earl.

“We're an hour later than we should be,” said Captain Berkeley, uneasily; “the tide is already among the rocks. We sha'n't be able to come back by the shore; we'll have to mount the cliff, over the grottoes.”

“That will not be difficult, monsieur,” said the marquis, across his shoulder; “there is one place where we can mount with ease. And, even if the tide is up to the mouth of the grottoes, it means only a little leaping from rock to rock, to reach the cliff, dry-shod, There is no danger; I have been here at higher water.”

They reached the caverns, after half an hour's clambering among weed-hung boulders, and, at the last, over rocks where the tide ran and lapped. And they went in upon the white sand floors, and sat down to rest.

The grottoes were not large, or in any way extraordinary—mere hollows gouged in the granite wall by a resistless sea. At low water, they were dry, if the sea was smooth; but, at high tide, the sea rose nearly to their roofs. There was sand underfoot, white as mountain snow, and pebbles of flint and granite and crystal, polished as if by hand. On the walls, there clung little black mussels, millions of them, covering the rock.

The Earl of Strope, crouching near the mouth of the cavern, took a handful of the polished pebbles, and tossed them, one by one, out into the rising water, scowling moodily after them as they fell, and taking no part in the conversation of the other four people.

“W'at is the matter, Monsieur de Strope?” inquired the marquise, gently. “You 'ave the air to be so triste. Is it—is it abbout the boots? Me, I like them—truly! They are such nice boots, an' convenable, but yes! We did not mean w'at we said; it was only—fun. Is it abbout the boots, monsieur?”

“It is this beastly mist!” said the earl; “I am afraid of it, and I shall be afraid of it so long as it lasts. It's not canny. I am always afraid of something happening in a mist. How do we know,” he demanded, irritably, “what is going on, out yonder? I hear the most absurd noises. I fancy I'm getting into my dotage.”

“Souls are wandering out yonder, monsieur,” said the Marquis de Kersalec, and the marquise and Varvara zu Ehrenstern crossed themselves: “souls of drowned men who died unshriven, and may not enter paradise—and souls of men out of the city down there, who died for their sins, or the sins of others, The mist is full of them; we are in a place of death, monsieur. Only, to-day, they do no more than whisper and moan, the souls that may not rest; in time of storm they shriek.”

“Jean, Jean!” cried the Marquise de Kersalec, and dropped her face into her hands, with a nervous sob. “Do not talk so!” she went on, in French; “you—frighten me. This place is horrible! Let us go away.”

The marquis turned on her, with angry irritation. “Do not be absurd!” said he; “you are too old to act like a child.” But, looking up, he caught a hard gleam from the Earl of Strope's eye, and his face flushed. “A thousand pardons, Aurélie,” he pleaded; “I did not mean to be rude. I ask the pardon of all. I was impatient.”

A wave slid over the crest of the boulder that lay before the cavern's mouth, and ran up the sandy floor a little way, until it touched one of the earl's hobnailed boots. The earl rose to his feet, and looked out. He was frowning when he turned backward. “We had best be going, at once,” said he; “the lower rocks outside are already covered, and we have a rod or two to go before reaching the point where we mount the cliff.”

The Marquis de Kersalec stood beside the old man, and, when he saw the submerged rocks, made an exclamation of concern. “The water rises faster than I had thought,” said he; “I should have watched. Yes, we must go at once; the rocks are covered with seaweed, and they will be slippery.”

The party made their way, very carefully, out upon the greater boulders, springing from one to another, at the risk of slipping on the wet seaweed. With the mounting sea, a heavier swell bore into the bay, and waves, oily still and smooth, but a foot in height, ran swift and deep among the rocks. Here and there was a space where no great boulders stood, safe above the flood, and, at these spaces, the five people were forced to make a swift dash across the dripping lower rocks, between waves. Once, there was even a pool to ford, across which the women must be carried. Captain Berkeley had been at the marquise's side and, when he saw what had to be done, halted suddenly, with an odd stricture at the heart. But, in the very moment while he stood forcing his arms to steadiness, and his face to indifference, the old earl turned, and, slipping his left arm about the woman's waist, lifted her across to safety, as one might lift a doll. So they came, little by little, with many narrow escapes from a fall or a wetting, near to the foot of the cliff, where a sort of natural stairway led up to the sheep path above. There remained no more than three or four yards between the great, flat boulder—dry as yet—upon which they stood, precariously, and the ledge which began the stairway. Separating the two was a round boss of rock, weed-covered, topping the water's surface between waves, but hidden when a wave passed over. Around this rock, the tide raced, thigh-deep and strong.

Captain Berkeley and the marquis crossed to the further ledge, and stood, a little in the water, to catch the two women, as they should jump from the middle rock. The earl remained behind, to help them from the boulder down on the smaller rock.

Had they crossed, as arranged, one at a time, they would probably have come to no harm, but being, by this time, a little frightened and much confused, they left the boulder—despite the efforts of Lord Strope—together, steadying each other with their arms, and stood poised upon the lower rock.

What came next happened so swiftly that no one of the five could have told quite how it occurred. Waiting upon the low, weed-hung rock for the moment to spring, the two women must have paused too long, for a wave came—a tenth wave, swift and strong and knee-high—and swept their feet from under them.

To the earl, gathering himself for a plunge to the rescue, the maligned hobnails proved, at the critical moment, faithless. His feet slipped upon the smooth granite, and he rolled helplessly backward, and caught himself, half dry, half under water, using language by no means fit for ladies' ears.

But the other two men leaped forward, at the same moment. In Captain Berkeley's mind, schooled to sudden perils, calmest in crises, there rose, upon the instant, the old, familiar thrill that waits upon danger—the gladness in the face of death. No paralysis of hand and brain was here, no palsy of horror that the woman he loved was being drowned before his eyes. He almost laughed as he took the water.

Thinking upon it afterward, he realized that Varvara zu Ehrenstern, and her equal peril, never once entered his mind. He leaped as straight and as unhesitatingly toward the Marquise de Kersalec as if he had been thrown there. He caught her as she was being whirled past him, waist-high—caught her when her head was six inches from the rock it must have struck in an instant more. And, in the ebb of the wave which had swept her oft her feet, he stood, dripping, but firm as a tree; and the Marquise de Kersalec lay in his arms, upon his breast, her face against his cheek, her black, wet hair across his lips.

Through the great swell of the next wave, he stood fixed, holding the marquise in his arms, and staring across the submerged rock into the eyes of the marquis, who also stood strong for the instant, even in his muscular weakness—with that strange power which weak men draw from their teeming nerves in a crisis—holding against his breast the senseless form of Varvara zu Ehrenstern.

And in Captain Berkeley's mind, above the whirl and confusion of action, above the horror of peril and the joy of relief, above everything else in the world, something beat and rang—nay, shouted—till his head throbbed with it. For, when the wave had torn her feet from under her, and she had felt herself going down, she had called his name—“Robert!”

XIV

During the evening of this same day, the Marquise de Kersalec sent one of the footmen to her husband's study, to ask if she might see him for a few moments, relative to a little dinner-party that they were giving the next day, to the Earl of Strope and Captain Berkeley. She had not seen him since their return from the grottoes, in the morning. Indeed, she had been shut up all the day in her own rooms, nursing a headache, denying herself even to Varvara zu Ehrenstern, from motives too vague and unformed for her own understanding. She had felt that she must have a long time, quite alone and undisturbed, in which to face the new things that had come to her—or the familiar things suddenly unmasked, with true, strange features. But, when she was alone, she found herself curiously unwilling to face them, an:d she pushed them all from her, with closed eyes and frightened hands, not daring to learn what they might be.

Only, when she sat reading her book, or stood looking out of a window over the moor, the book or the heathered moor would, all at once, darken away from her sight, as a magic-lantern picture darkens away from the screen 1t is thrown on; and she would hear the rush and suck of water, and feel the strong, sure arms of Captain Berkeley holding her close against him—feel his heart beating fast—see his eves. And, at these moments, the marquise's breath would catch, all at once, and a sudden fit of trembling would come over her, from head to foot.

The servant whom she had sent to her husband did not return, and, after she had waited a few moments, and had twice rung her bell, she herself went down the stairs, rather impatiently, and mode her way, through the corridors and the darkened suites of state apartments, to the marquis's rooms.

The outer door stood slightly ajar, but she knocked at it, before entering, and called out her name. It seemed to her that she caught the sound of hurried footsteps from within, but of this she was not at all certain. She knocked again; then, hearing no answer, stepped inside, and went through the little waiting-room. and ported the hangings of the farther doorway.

The marquis sat by his great working-table. His back was to the light, and he supported his head with one hand.

“Ah,” said the marquise, “you are here, then? I sent to ask you if you would be so good as to come to me, for a moment, but, for some reason, the servant did not return. Then, I knocked at your door, twice. I suppose you did not hear. I wished to see you about that dinner to-morrow. The Count and Countess de Paignard are in Douarnenez, I hear. I wanted to know if you thought it would be worth while to ask them to meet the Earl of Strope.”

The marquis moved his head, impatiently, upon his hand. “Do as you like,” he answered, wearily; “it is of no consequence to me. I cannot think of anything but that terrible affair of this morning. It has completely unstrung me.” indeed, he looked quite ill and very nervous. The shock, combined with his unusual bodily exertion, had been a very great strain upon him.

“Oh, I should not feel so about it,” said she; “it is all safely over now, and no one is the worse for it. I am not sure that it wasn't rather fun. You were admirably quick, you and—and Captain Berkeley.”

“Ah, Captain Berkeley!” said the marquis, with an unpleasant emphasis; “Is there not a little too much of Captain Berkeley? His unhesitating choice of yourself for rescue, rather than the Countess zu Ehrenstern, in spite of the fact that your husband might, naturally enough, be considered your proper protector, was—flattering, most flattering!”

“I did not observe,” returned the Marquise de Kersalec, looking steadily into the man's eyes, “any tendency on the part of my husband to dispute Captain Berkeley's privilege, at the moment. I do not remember any feverish struggle on his part to save me from the death I should certainly have met, but for Captain Berkeley.”

The marquis's pale face suddenly flushed crimson.

“Mind,” she went on, I am not attempting to reproach you, or anything like that. I am merely replying to your remark about Captain Berkeley, to whom I owe my life. Your rescue of Varvara was splendid, splendid! Still, now that you have opened the discussion, I should think it would have been easier for you to save me. I am much smaller and lighter than Varvara; I'm rather little, and Varvara is a heavy woman, though she does not look it. It must have been hard work for you—you are not strong.”

And, for the first time, she looked at him with a touch of that half-contempt which a woman feels for a weak man.

“It was quite natural” said the marquis, with an assumption of dignity. “I saw that Captain Berkeley meant to go to your aid, and, moreover, I was much nearer to the countess than to you—much nearer!”

“Ah?” she questioned. “I had thought it quite otherwise. Let me see! I fell to the right of the rock. That would have brought me nearly in front of you, would it not? You must have crossed before me to reach Varvara. Ah, well, it doesn't in the least matter, as I said before; we are all safe, now. It struck me as rather curious; that was all.”

She had been half-leaning, half-sitting, upon the arm of a great, oaken chair that stood across the table from the marquis, and her skirt brushed against something that hung over the chair's arm, to the floor. She stooped to pick up this, and raised it a little way into the air. It was a small, white silk wrap, or shawl, which Varvara zu Ehrenstern was in the habit of wearing about her neck and shoulders, when the weather was cool or damp.

The marquis straightened suddenly in his chair, with a muttered exclamation, when he saw the piece of silk in his wife's hand, and, at the same moment, there came, from the shadows at the farther end of the long room, where the little Roman lamps winked red, something which might have been a stir of draperies, and a quickly caught breath.

The Marquise de Kersalec looked up swiftly from the shawl to meet her husband's eyes, and down again to the thing in her hand, and she half turned toward the farther end of the room. Then, she dropped the shawl again, over the arm of the chair.

“Some one of the servants must have brought this in here, by mistake,” she said, quietly; “I think it belongs to Varvara. You might have it sent back to her.” She turned away from the table toward the door. “I'll not bother you any longer,” she went on. “If you do not care about the de Paignards, I shall not ask them for to-morrow.

“Don't forget about Varvara's shawl,” she added, from the doorway. “I am going to her rooms, now, to see her. I shall tell her that it isn't lost.”

XV

“There is no one on the terrace,” said the Earl of Strope, as he and Captain Berkeley came up through the garden at Kersalec. “They usually sit out there in the early evening, especially if it is fine. We cannot be too early, I should think; it is quite eight o'clock.”

“Eight!” cried Captain Berkeley. “My word! I told you that we were asked for half-past eight.”

“You did not,” said the old gentleman; “you said eight.”

“Eight-thirty!” declared Captain Berkeley, stubbornly; “you're losing your memory. Is it only eight now? We're half an hour too early.”

They hesitated a moment, on the steps of the terrace, with half a mind to retreat to the moors for a while; but the door of the castle stood open, as it usually did, and so, though there was no servant about to announce them, they went inside and along the corridor, toward a comfortable drawing-room, where the marquise and Varvara zu Ehrenstern were accustomed to sit when the weather was bad.

“Yes, they are in there,” said the earl, presently; “I can hear their voices.” Then, all at once, he halted, and Captain Berkeley, too, pulled himself up, and they stood still, looking at each other with inquiring eyes.

“Something of a row!” said Captain Berkeley, in a lowered tone; “the marquis is on the war-path again. I expect we'd best get out, for a time, before they discover that we have been here. It would be very embarrassing, for every one, if they knew we'd overheard them.”

But the old earl laid a restraining hand on the other's shoulder, and listened, without shame. “Wait a bit,” he growled, in what he considered a whisper; “wait a bit! I don't like de Kersalec's voice. He is going to pieces, very rapidly. He might do something nasty.”

It was quite evident that, inside the drawing-room beyond, a quarrel was in progress, and that the quarrel was between the Marquis de Kersalec and his wife. The two men, out in the corridor, could hear the voices, though not the words—save now and then, when a voice was raised higher than common. It was evident, also, that the marquis was quite beside himself with rage, for his voice shook and broke and quavered, and, at times, rose almost to a woman s scream. But the voice of his wife was low and bitter and contemptuous, and she spoke seldom. It seemed as if the marquis, in his excitement, were walking rapidly about the room, and once, between two bursts of half-hysterical invective, there came a slight crash, as if he had run into a table or a cabinet, and knocked something to the floor.

Then, suddenly, there came a new voice, the Countess zu Ehrenstern's voice, raised to a terrified scream. “Ah, no; ah, no! Jean, Jean, be careful!”

The Earl of Strope and Captain Berkeley gained the door of the room in two strides, and halted there a moment.

The Marquis de Kersalec stood with his back toward them, leaning forward, beside a table that occupied the centre of the room, under the great, hanging chandelier of crystal. His wife stood just before him, facing him, with level eyes and a quiet smile, and, not far away, was the Countess zu Ehrenstern, her hands at her two checks. The man's voice was thick and almost inarticulate with anger, and he trembled from head to foot.

“I tell you,” he cried, “you shall apologize to the countess for what you have said! You shall apologize. And you shall refuse again to see this marcheur, this chevalier d'industrie, Captain Berkeley, and this street-fair-strong-man, the Earl of Strope. I am your husband and your master, and I command it. We are done with them! Do you hear? We are done with them!”

“Pardon me,” said the woman, very quietly, and with steady eyes; “pardon me—you may be done with them; I am not. They are my friends, and I refuse to give them up to satisfy your petty spite and your silly jealousy.”

Then, in a flash, and before any one in the room could make a move to stop him, the marquis raised the pair of white gloves which he held in his hand, and struck his wife across the face with them.

Varvara zu Ehrenstern screamed again, calling him by name, and catching at his arm. But the Earl of Strope, pushing aside Captain Berkeley, who would have been ahead of him, sprang forward, with a snarl of rage, and caught the man by the collar of his coat.

“You'd strike a woman, would you?” he cried; “you damned blackguard! You'll never strike any one again.” And, because he was furiously angry and careless of whether he killed the man or not, he shook him, lifting him free from the floor, as one might shake a rug, till the coat ripped and tore under his iron hands, and the man's head rolled and bobbed helplessly from side to side. He shook him, as clowns in a hippodrome shake and beat a dummy stuffed with rags, to make their audience laugh. Then, when he had done, he threw him, with a final twist, over in a corner—a mere bundle of torn and disheveled clothes. And Varvara zu Ehrenstern cast herself upon the bundle, with a great, sobbing cry, for she believed that the man was dead.

But the marquis came, somehow, in part to his senses, and, pushing the woman from him, ran around the wall, crouching low, like a beast, his livid face turned back over his shoulder to the giant who stood in the middle of the room. And the face was twisted into a mask of terror and rage and pain, awful to see. So, holding to the wall, he reached the door into the corridor, and disappeared.

The earl turned back toward the marquise, but she had gone, straight as a homing bird, into the arms of Captain Berkeley, and was clinging there, sobbing and shaking, not from fear, for there was no fear in her, but from sheer anger at the insult she had suffered. But, after she had clung there for a space, and Captain Berkeley's arm had drawn about her shoulders, she looked up into his face, and her eyes met his. Then, somehow, little by little, all her anger and humiliation slipped from her like a garment, and was forgotten, and again—as it had done yesterday—her breath caught sharply, and a fit of trembling came over her, from head to foot.

When the earl turned to her, her eyes were fixed, very wide and bright and strange, upon Captain Berkeley's, and her lips were parted. She seemed not to breathe at all.

“Great God in heaven!” said the old man, under his breath; “great God in heaven!” He touched Captain Berkeley upon the arm. “Take her away,” he commanded; “we will talk later of what must be done. “Take her away!”

And, when the two had left the room, he sank down in a chair beside the onyx centre-table, and laid his arms out across it. His somber eyes were fixed upon the Countess zu Ehrenstern, who crouched still, beside the wall where Juan de Kersalec had fallen. Well?” he asked, after a time; “well?”

But the Countess zu Ehrenstern made no reply; she stared at him, dully.

“I have been very blind,” he said. “It was in my mind that certain things should happen, and, like many other men, I supposed they were sure to happen because I wished them. That was foolish as well as blind, and I am too old to be foolish.”

He chafed his strong hands together, upon the polished table, and stared across at the woman. “I have been greatly puzzled,” he went on, “for a fortnight past. I felt that things were happening, but I did not understand—because I was blind. It was only yesterday morning, in the Baie des Trépassés, that I saw.” He leaned over the table, and his keen old eyes pierced the woman across the room. “Is it true, madame?” he demanded. “Is it true what I saw yesterday morning, in the Baie des Trépassés?”

The Countess zu Ehrenstern came and sat down by the table, opposite to him. Her head drooped, and there was no light in her eyes. “I don't know, quite,” she answered, wearily. “It is true that the marquis loves me, and not his wife—if that is what you mean—and that I—love him. If you believe that he has wronged her in any direct act, you are mistaken. I suppose there is very little difference though, morally. It's much the same, isn't it?”

“It is much the same,” he assented nodding; “acts matter very little; it is the spirit behind them that counts. What is going to come of it all?” he demanded, after a short silence.

The countess lifted her arms from the table, and dropped them again, and the Russian bracelets which she wore clinked upon the polished onyx. “What fate wills,” she said, in a tired voice; “I am past struggling. What fate wills. I tell you, I am past struggling,” he repeated, looking up at him, with bitter, resentful eyes, as if she felt the condemnation he had not spoken. “I love him. No one ever loved him before. No one ever understood him, knew how great he is, and how earnest, and how unselfish. What has she ever done for him but sit at his table, and drive in his carriage? How much has she ever appreciated or helped him? I could help him. I have helped him more in a month than she has helped him in four years. I tell you, I love him. What is law beside a great love?”

“What is any love beside the law?” asked the Earl of Strope. “She is—she was your friend,” said he; “she trusted you; you were here as her guest.”

“I don't care,” cried the woman, fiercely; “I tell you, I love him! Do you fancy I haven't thought of all those things? Do you imagine I have not fought and struggled and lost, and fought again? Do you think I am glad to betray such a woman as Aurélie de Kersalec? She is the loveliest thing in God's world, and yet—I cannot stop.”

The old man watched her, with puzzled, anxious eyes, “I had thought,” said he, “I had hoped that it would be Robert Berkeley; that you would fancy him. At first, it seemed so, but, somehow, it did not seem to go on. I wonder why.”

The woman shook her head, and her eyes were as puzzled as his own. “I don't know,” said she. “At one time, I thought so, too. Perhaps, if he had really cared—I don't know. Only the other day, he might have changed it all, I think. I had been making a hard fight, and I was ready for—anything. Somehow, we never quite got on together. Somehow, we always just missed it. I don't know how, or why. I practically told him, once, that he might kiss me. I never knew why he didn't do it. Perhaps, even then, he was in love with Aurélie, though I never suspected it till to-night, Did you see their faces?”

“Yes,” said the earl; “yes, I saw.”

Then, for a time, they sat without speaking. The countess stared down upon the polished surface of the onyx table, in which the lights were mirrored, and twisted, absently, about her finger, the sapphire ring engraved with the royal arms.

“I wonder,” said she, at last, “I wonder if you know what it is, sir, to love some one very greatly, so that everything else loses proportion, and seems trivial—all other things, such as honor and duty and friendship and the world's voice.”

The earl shook his head, meditatively. “No,” said he, “I expect not. No I am an old man. I expect I have forgotten. The blood goes colder at eighty year.”

The Countess zu Ehrenstern turned and fingered her sapphire ring, bending her head over it. “I loved a man once before,” she said, softly; “it was not Karl zu Ehrenstern, it was a king.”

“Ah!” said the earl, with emphasis.

“I very nearly ran away with him,” she went on, still looking down at the sapphire ring. “He was not happy at court. He was very sick of being a king, and I—loved him. He was such a man as a woman might love. So, I very nearly ran away with him.”

“Yes,” said the Earl of Strope; “yes, I know.”

The countess looked up at him, for an instant, with a faint, whimsical smile. “You knew when you first saw my ring, did you not?” she inquired. “You frightened me, somewhat, for I did not wish the people here to know.”

“Will you tell me,” asked the old gentleman, “just by way of satisfying my curiosity, why you did not run away with Ludwig, why he finally stopped at home? It is a long time since—four years, I think—but I remember the gossip of the day.”

“It was the Queen,” said she, still smiling; “Ludwig discovered suddenly that the Queen was worth stopping at home for. She won him away from me, as I had won him away from her, before. Kings are fickle, my lord; it is their divine right.”

The earl rose from his chair, sighing, and took a turn back and forth across the room. He halted beside the onyx table, and stood there, looking down upon its mottled face. “I have liked you,” he said, at last, “from the first moment I saw you. I have liked you more than all but a few of the many women I have known. I knew about the history of that sapphire ring, and, in spite of it, I was willing, even anxious, that you should marry Robert Berkeley, because I thought that you would make him a better wife than any pink-and-white girl. But I cannot stand idly by, and see you ruin Aurélie de Kersalec's life. She is your friend and my friend, and, as you have said, she is the loveliest thing in God's world. I will not have her world turned into ashes about her—not if I can prevent it.”

The countess sank back in her chair, very wearily, and raised her eyes to his. “What would you have me do?” she asked.

“Leave Kersalec to-morrow,” the Earl of Strope.

But she sat forward in her chair, with a sudden cry, and her hands gripped at the table's edge. “No!” she whispered, fiercely; “no! I won't give him up! I tell you, I won't give him up! Have I had such a happy life that I can throw away happiness? I love him, don't you understand? I love him more than you ever loved any one in all your long life. Oh, I know what you think of him. You think he is a weak, dreaming fool—half a man—mad, very likely. You called him a blackguard, a little while ago, and nearly killed him with your hands—well, he was a blackguard, for the moment. He is very nervous, and he lost control of himself. He was a blackguard, but I love him. Maybe, he is all the other things you think, but I love him. What if I should leave Kersalec to-morrow? What good would it do? Aurélie does not love him. She will never speak to him again, after his striking her. It would be an impossible state of affairs. And, besides, he would follow me.”

“Not if you should refuse to allow him to follow you,” said the earl; “not if you should definitely break off with him before leaving. I do not know what could be done. It may be that, with you out of his reach, they could be reconciled, but I do not know. At any rate, you must not stay here. You must give him up, for her sake.”

He took another turn back and forth across the room, frowning and working his great white eyebrows, and, after a time, he came again and stood beside her, laving one of his hands rather awkwardly upon her shoulder. “I wish it might be otherwise,” said he, “for I cannot forget or overcome my great fondness for you. I should like to see you happy, and I think you have never been very happy. Some lives seem to be made up of bitterness and sacrifice, of cups taken away from their lips. But, if you believe that you could be happy in the path you wish to tread, you are very wrong. It would end in worse bitterness. I am an old man, countess, and I know that, after all, the sweetest things in life are one's dreams of what might have been. They are commonly said to be the saddest, but that is not true. They are the sweetest, for there is neither disappointment nor disillusionment in them. You must give up Jean de Kersalec, for his wife's sake, and you must leave the château, to-morrow.”

The countess sat for a long time with bowed head, and fingers that stirred and played upon the table-top. Then, she looked up, and something had gone out of her face, leaving it drawn and blank and old.

“I shall do as you wish,” she said; and there was no feeling of any sort in her tone. “I suppose you are right. Yes, of course, you are right; I shall do as you wish.” She rose to her feet, and held out her hand to him—it was quite steady. “I think,” said she, “I think if—if you do not mind, I would rather not say anything more about it—just now. It—is not easy to do, what I am doing. I think I will—say good night. I shall leave to-morrow. Good night, sir. Perhaps, I care—something about keeping your—friendship. Perhaps, that is why I do this. Good night, Lord Strope. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, countess,” said the Earl of Strope. “I shall not see you again here, I expect; but in Paris, or where-ever you may be, I shall find you, and, if an old man's friendship is worth anything, mine is at your service, always. I hope that we shall see much of each other.” He pressed her hand, very gently, and was tactful enough not to express any gratitude, or to say anything at all about the sacrifice she had made. Then, he went out of the room, and through the long corridor, to the terrace.

XVI

But Captain Berkeley and the marquise, leaving the room where Jean de Kersalec had suffered his punishment, went slowly out through the corridor, to the landward terrace, where the moon printed, black and sharp across the flagstones, a silhouette of the crenelated battlements above, and so, down the terrace steps, to the garden.

The marquise clung always to Captain Berkeley's arm, and, when they had come to the garden, and were standing in a sheltered corner, waist-high among the flowers, bathed in pallid moonlight, she moved about so that she faced him once more, holding to his shoulders with both hands, and her eyes—as they had been in the drawing-room—were fixed, wide and bright and strange, upon his eyes smoldering in the gloom above her, and her lips were parted. She seemed not to breathe at all.

Captain Berkeley's hands were clenched and shaking at his sides. Then, all at once, he gave a sudden, choked cry, and his arms went up behind her shoulders, holding her--crushing her against him.

“It was—me, monsieur?” whispered, in a catching breath. “It was—me, all the time?”

“You?” cried Captain Berkeley; “you? Oh, you loveliest thing in God's great world, could it be any one else? It's always been you, always, since I was in the nursery, and used to see pictures of you in my fairy tales, since I used to go to sleep at night, and dream about you, and cry in the morning, because you weren't there. I've dreamed of you ever since, when I slept, or when I sat alone by the fire, and shut my eyes, and saw you, and made believe you were real. I knew you'd come, some day! There's never been any other woman in the world! Ah, they babble about my loving other women, and so I've fancied I did. I've been a tragic ass over a half-dozen of them, but I knew they weren't real. I knew you'd come. I tell you, when I saw you, that first day, in the garden here, I could have screamed like a woman—or wept like one. I knew it was you. I knew it was the woman I'd been dreaming about, and pretending about, and loving, since I was in my cradle. You? I tell you, no one in the wide world ever loved anything as I've loved you, since that day in the garden. When that—that least, that swine of the gutter, struck you in the face to-night, I saw red. I'd have killed him with my hands if the earl had not held me back. And I'll kill him yet, if there's any life left in him. Oh, sweetest, sweetest, I've nearly gone mad, sometimes, to think of you as his wife.”

But it seemed as if all recollection of what had occurred in the drawing-room was gone from the marquise's mind. She almost laughed aloud, clinging still to his shoulders, and looking up into his face. “It was truly me, then? she persisted. “It was me you 'ave mean', all the time, w'en you 'ave say 'ow you—'ow you love 'er? It was me you 'ave mean' w'en you talk' about taking 'er away weeth you—everywhere?

“Oh, loveliest!” he cried; “who else could it be?”

The marquise's head dropped upon his breast. Her black hair was across his face. “An' that was w'y you would not tell me 'oo it was,” she whispered, her face hidden. “That was w'v you could nevvaire tell 'er that you love 'er, monsieur, monsieur!”

Then, all at once, she seemed to remember what had happened, and she started up in Captain Berkeley's arms, with a quick, angry exclamation, and her hands clenched, and a flush came over her face. “'E struck me!” she cried; “'e struck me with 'is glove!” And she rubbed at the cheek which de Kersalec's glove had touched. “No one evvaire struck me biffore, in all my life,” she said, with drawn lips. And she seemed to grow more angry with each moment that she thought of the humiliation which had been put upon her.

“Oh, he will pay for that, right enough,” said Captain Berkeley. “I shall kill him for that—as I said before—unless the earl has already killed him.”

“Kill—'im, monsieur?” she whispered, looking up into his face, wide-eyed, even in the midst of her anger; “kill 'im? You would not murder 'im?”

“Oh, no,” said Captain Berkeley; “I shall not murder him. He will have something in his hands when he goes. It won't be murder—not properly. But I shall kill him, for all that. Why, God in heaven!” he cried; “do you think I could ever hold up my head again if there were a man walking about the earth who had struck you? Why—why—” stammered Captain Berkeley, “why, he struck you! Don't you realize it? The beast struck you!”

“An' then?” said the marquise, faintly; “an' then, monsieur, when you 'ave killed 'im?”

Captain Berkeley's arms drew closer. “Then,” said he, looking into her eyes, “why, then, I shall pick you up, and take you away.” And he gave a little, shaking laugh. “Did you think I was going to leave you here? I shall take you away with me to all those places we talked of, because I want to see how much nicer they are with you along. And we'll do all the things I said, we'll spend our lives doing them. Our lives? Oh, loveliest, our life! our life! We'll make it all come true, all that I've dreamed of, through those years. We'll live such a life, my queen! We'll forget everything that's bitter and cold and unhappy. We'll forget that we've not been always together, that there was a gray life before the golden one. Oh, loveliest, loveliest!”

The marquise stirred in his arms, and he felt her breath coming fast. She laid her head against his shoulder, turning her face away, toward the moonlight. And she stood so for a long time, very quiet, not speaking.

“Forget?” she said, at last; “we should nevvaire forget, if you 'ad killed 'im. No, you mus' not kill 'im, monsieur. 'E would stan' between us, always. We should feel 'im there. We could nevvaire quite forget.”

“But I tell you,” cried Captain Berkeley, “I shouldn't murder the beast; I should kill him in fair fight. What more can a man do? My word, I'm honoring him! I'm paying him a compliment. I must kill him, somehow; what in the world do you want me to do—poison him?”

But she shook her head. “You mus' not kill 'im, monsieur,” she said, again. “Even if you killed 'im in fair fight, it would be almos' murder, biccause you would be killing 'im to put 'im out of the way—to be rid of 'im so that—that we could—we could go away.”

Captain Berkeley took her suddenly by the shoulders, and held her out from him at arm's length. He stared into her eyes, with head thrust forward, and she saw, in the moonlight, the veins standing out upon his forehead.

“What do you—mean?” he said, in a hoarse whisper. “What do you—mean? Do you mean that—you won't go? You say I must not kill him. Do you mean that you're going to stay here, that you're going on—after everything—just as if nothing had happened? is that what you mean? Am I going to—lose you after all?” His whisper shook and wavered, and the hands with which he held her shoulders gripped her, trembling, till they hurt.

But the marquise tore her shoulders from his grip, and threw herself upon his breast again, holding his head between her palms, and sobbing hysterically. “Ah, no; ah, no!” she cried, and her voice mounted with a note of terror in it. “Ah, no, monsieur, take me with you! Take me away with you! I should die 'ere, in this dreadful place. I should go mad. Take me away with you, monsieur. We billong together, us! We love each othaire. You mus' not leave me 'ere.” Her voice broke, and she dropped her face once more upon his shoulder, sobbing.

Then, after a space, when she was calmer, she went on: “I will go with you, monsieur, if you wan' me. I will go with you anyw'ere—anyw'ere, an', if you leave me 'ere, I shall go mad, or kill myself. I will not let you kill—'im, biccause you would not forget, an', some time, you would be sorry. You would feel as if you 'ad murdered im to put 'im out of the way. I will go away with you, an' leave 'im 'ere. It make' no difference w'at they will say, the people!” she cried; I do not care, me. I am beyon' caring. Oh, monsieur, I can think of nothing but my love an'—you—of nothing but the life we shall 'ave together.”

She shivered in his arms. I suppose, I suppose I am ver' wicked. They will call me w'at—w'at I 'ave 'ear' them call othaire women. I suppose I shall lose my soul. Do you remember w'at you said that firs' day, monsieur? You said, that many people were willing to imperil their souls for relief from w'at 'ad biccome intolerable. me, I 'ad been theenking 'ow intolerable my life 'ere ad biccome. All that day, I 'ad been theenking of it, so that you startled me. I remember that I said one mus' be ver' desperate to do that—to risk losing one's soul. I said one's soul was a ver' precious theeng. Oh, monsieur, I mus' be ver' desperate and ver' wicked, biccause love seem' to me more precious than my soul. I can see nothing, feel nothing, bot love, monsieur. Am I so wicked? I 'ave not 'ad much love in my life. Evvery one 'as been kin' to me, bot no one 'as evvaire love me till—till you. Ah, take me with you! Take me away, or I shall die, now that I know w'at love might be. See! it is not so much, the sacrifice I make. Let them call me w'at they will! If it is a sin, I am beyon' caring. Oh, monsieur, love is greater than one's soul! Take me with you!”

Captain Berkeley put her gently out of his arms, holding her away when she would have clung to him; then, he left her side, and began to walk up and down one of the little paths, in the moonlight, with head bowed and hands smiting each other. And, after a time, he moved over across the garden to the seaward wall, and he laid his arms upon its top, and bent his head over them. He stood there, a long while. And the marquise, still and scarcely breathing among the flowers, watched him.

Then, at last, he stood upright, with a long breath and a shake of the shoulders. It seemed to the marquise that his square jaw was squarer than common, and she noticed that a crease had come between his brows.

He took her two hands in his, holding them against his breast, and looked down at her. “I love you more than anything in the world,” said he, “more than a man ever loved any woman before; but I will not take you away with me while your husband is alive. Perhaps, it is because I love you so much that I will not let you soil yourself in people's eyes, that I will not let you commit a sin. It is a question of my sin or yours. If I kill de Kersalec, it is I who have the responsibility upon my soul. If you come to me while he is alive, the responsibility is yours. There is no other way. I will not let you do what you have said you would do. For the last time, loveliest, answer me. Our happiness hangs upon it. Will you let me fight your husband? Remember, the world calls it perfectly fair. Will you let me fight with him?”

The marquise began to tremble, very violently. She hid her face upon Captain Berkeley's breast, and he heard her breathing quicken to sobs, and, after a long time, slow again. When she raised her face, it was very white, but she smiled.

“No, monsieur,” she said.

XVII

When Captain Berkeley came downstairs the next morning, it was to the shriek of wind, and the roar of surf. He found the earl standing by the breakfast-room windows, holding a pair of binoculars at his eyes.

“There's a fishing-boat out near the Tévennec,” said the old man; “it cannot possibly live in this storm. Listen to that!” A wave broke upon the rocks, two hundred feet below, with a crashing roar, and a sheet of spray, like a heavy downpour of rain, drenched the whole face of the castle. “What I cannot make out,” went on the earl, in a perplexed tone, “is why the boat should be there at all, why it should ever have put out in such a sea. It is nothing but a little thing of one sail. Do you wish the glasses?”

Captain Berkeley took the binoculars, and trained them upon the bit of white that he could see only between the frequent gusts of rain which slanted down out of a torn sky. The Tévennec rock was a smother of white foam, and the long Pointe du Raz lay as if half-buried in snow. The sea was terrible.

“That is fine sailing, anyhow,” said he. “The poor devils! They can't last long. Of course, attempting to land anywhere is quite out of the question. They must have been absolutely mad to go out. I suppose you have not a more powerful glass? We might see how many men are the boat.”

“Why, yes,” said the earl, “there is a big marine glass in a corner of my study. We'll have it brought.” He gave an order to a servant, who left the room, and presently returned, bringing a large telescoping glass, some four or five feet long when drawn out.

The earl arranged it across the top of two chairs, and drew it to the proper focus, sitting on one of the chairs; then, he swung the end till he found the Little boat.

“Ah,” said he, “that is much better. There is only one man in the boat. You are right, it is wonderful sailing. I can't see his face. He is kneeling at the tiller, and he has the sheet made fast to— Good God!” The old man's hand shook upon the tube, and he turned a white, amazed face to the other man.

“Look!” said he, hoarsely; “look!”

Captain Berkeley drew the glass to the focus fit for his eye, and took one look. Then, he sprang up, and the two stood staring into each other's faces.

“To the stables, at once!” cried the earl, after a moment; “we must ride to Kersalec. It may be that something can be done, even now. No, that is out of the question. There is no other boat, and to embark, if there were one, would only mean death. Still, we must see the others. Look sharp!”

The wind outside, even in the sheltered stable yard, was something frightful. Once mounted and upon the open moor, it well-nigh tore the men bodily from their horses, but they lay flat upon the animals' backs, their faces low in the mane, and rode as if death were riding behind them, through the slant, salt rain of whirling spray, which the gale drove inland.

They dismounted at the lower gate, and ran up through the bedraggled garden—where broken hollyhocks flapped in the wind, and rose-petals whirled about their feet—to the deserted terrace, and into the castle.

In the corridor, a servant, staring at their white faces and spray-soaked coats, said that madame was in the drawing-room, warming herself before a fire, and that the Countess zu Ehrenstern had gone, he believed, up to the house-top, to watch the storm.

At the foot of the great stairway, the earl paused, and laid a hand upon Captain Berkeley's shoulder. “Go in to her, lad,” said he. “Break it to her, as gently as you can, that he will not come back. It is not as if she had loved him. It will be a shock to her, but not a sorrow.” He smiled down, whimsically, upon the younger man as he stood on the first step. “I mind an old hymn,” he continued, “from many years back. It said, 'God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.' Go in to her. This thing means the dawn of life to you—and to her.”

And then—for he had been there before, and knew the way—the earl went on up the stairs, and then up two more flights, till he came, at last, to the door that let him out upon the gale-swept house-top.

The Countess zu Ehrenstern was there, crouching behind the crenelated seaward parapet. She wore a long rain-coat that flapped in the terrible wind, and snapped behind her, like a whip, and her yellow hair had come partially down, so that it, also, streamed behind her, and snapped in the gale. She held a long telescoping glass, which rested upon the edge of the parapet, and pointed seaward, toward the Tévennec.

She looked up when the earl came near, but made no sign of surprise or of greeting. Her face was set and drawn and white, but it showed no feeling at all. It was as if she had passed beyond that.

The earl put his head down close beside hers, to make himself heard in the wind. “When did he go?” he asked, "and why? He cannot possibly come back alive. He must have been mad!”

The Countess zu Ehrenstern laid down the glass, and, for a moment, sank back into a corner of the parapet, so that she was out of the violence of the wind, and could speak without shouting. “I do not know when he went,” said she, and her voice was quite as expressionless as her masklike face. “I have not seen him this morning. Last night, after you left, I—I went to his study. He was there and—I told him what—what I promised you I would tell him.”

She looked away, and, for an instant her hands shook in her lap. “That is all I know” she said; “I saw the boat this morning, by accident, as, doubtless, you did. I went o the study, and he was not there, Everything was in confusion and—have you looked with a powerful glass? He is in the armor of his ancestor, King Gradlon. It may be that he is mad—I do not know, but I think he is going to the throne that awaits him—down yonder.”

The Earl of Strope beat his white head. “God rest bis soul,” said “that had little rest here. He was a man of dreams and sorrows—out of place in a workaday world. No one understood him, here loved him. Let us hope he will be at home there.”

“I loved him,” declared Varvara zu Ehrenstern, and she lifted tragic eyes; “you shall not say that no one loved him. I understood him, too. I wish I were with him, in that boat, yonder.”

Then, after a space, she crept again to her place by the long marine glass, and the earl crouched beside her, pulling his binoculars from his pocket. So, they watched together, and the wind shrieked past their heads, and tore at their garments, and—even at that great height—sheets of spray cut their faces, from time to time, and blurred the lenses of their instruments.

“He is making for home,” said the earl, after a time; “he is running for the Baie des Trépassés.”

“Watch!” cried the woman, in a shaking voice.

The little boat came on before the storm, with incredible swiftness. At times, it would be almost out of sight in the trough of the sea. Again, it would poise for a moment, on a wave's crest, before plunging.

Then, very suddenly, as it drove onward, just outside that awful bay of the dead, it seemed, for the fraction of a second, to pause, to wheel half about. The two at watch, with their glasses, saw the man at the tiller loose everything, and stand upright in the stern, a strange, fantastic figure in his white armor—and even as one looked, it was not there. The storm-swept sea was empty.

The glass rolled from the countess's hands, and she swayed forward, toward the weatherworn sides of the parapet. But the earl caught her in his strong arms, and set her very gently back, where she had been before, in the sheltered corner; and, after a long time, she opened her eyes, and looked at him. “It is all over,” she said, dully.

“Yes,” said the old man; “yes, it is all over. I think he is happier now. I wonder,” he went on, frowning, “I wonder if he meant to do it. Of course, he must have.”

“Oh, yes,” said she, with a certain surprise in her tone; “yes, he meant to do it. Last night he—he said things which I—might have understood if I had not been so wrapped up in my own troubles. I might have saved him, perhaps, even if I had broken my word to you. Perhaps, it is better this way. Somehow, I never had much hope of winning any happiness from it all. Somehow, I was prepared for—for something of this sort.” Then, for another long time, she sat quite silent, dry-eyed and still.

“What,” asked the old earl, at last, “what will you do?”

But the countess shook her head, very wearily. “I don't know,” she answered, “Somehow, I seem to care very little. I loved him. Somehow, it does not seem to make much difference what comes, now. I had thought—in case of anything like this—of a convent, but I have not the temperament for a religious. What shall I do? I suppose I shall just go on, you know. That is like most people. I suppose I shall just go on.”

Down in the little drawing-room, the Marquise de Kersalec stood, white-faced, looking into Captain Berkeley's eyes. And, in her own eyes, there trembled, behind all the shock and horror and pain, a great passion of love, and of shamed, unwilling joy.

“It is—terrible, monsieur!” she said, in a hushed voice; “too terrible to say! There is no good to preten' that I 'ave love 'im, bot, après tout, 'e was my 'usban'. God res' 'is soul!”

And then, at something she saw in Captain Berkeley's eyes—shamed and unwilling there, as in her own—she began to tremble. And she covered her face with her two hands. Ah, monsieur, monsieur,” she cried, “not now, monsieur! Wait, wait! There is all a lifetime to come—all a lifetime of love an' evverything beautiful! Wait, monsieur!”

“Oh, madame,” said Captain Berkeley, “I have waited five-and-thirty years. I can wait a little longer—but, loveliest of everything, the days are slow!”