Читать книгу The Vision Splendid - D. K. Broster - Страница 6

Horatia went into the house singing. Something shining and vital seemed to have brushed against her in passing to-day.

(2)

The impression which Miss Grenville gained of M. de la Roche-Guyon at the Squire's dinner-party next day was that, though separated from her by the length of the table, many épergnes and piles of fruit, and though something monopolised by the ladies on either side of him, he was always looking in her direction if she happened to glance in his. It gave her a curious and entirely novel sensation.

In the drawing-room afterwards all the ladies were loud in his praises. "So charming, and with such courtly manners—so distinguished, and O, so handsome! How interesting, too, that he should be a friend of Mr. Hungerford's—characters so totally unlike, and tastes too, one would imagine. But evidently the Count knows how to be all things to all men!"

Horatia, to whom this last remark was made, stiffened a little on Tristram's behalf. "I think it was very good of Mr. Hungerford to ask him to stay with him," she said, "for he is only an acquaintance. It is really M. de la Roche-Guyon's brother whom Mr. Hungerford knows."

When the gentlemen came in from the dining-room, rather earlier than they were expected, there was a knot of ladies in the centre of the room, of which, however, Horatia was not a part. Into this circle M. de la Roche-Guyon was immediately absorbed, and a buzz of laughter and conversation at once arose.

Tristram came over to Horatia smiling. "It's hopeless to get La Roche-Guyon out, but no doubt he is enjoying himself. I do not think his brother would be quite so much at home."

"Why?" asked Horatia with interest. "What is his brother like? Is he very different?"

"Quite," responded Tristram laconically, sitting down beside her.

"He is older, is he not?"

"Yes, by nearly twenty years, I should think."

"I can't imagine this M. de la Roche-Guyon twenty years older."

"You need not try. They are not in the least replicas of each other. Emmanuel de la Roche-Guyon was never like his brother, of that I am sure."

"It is sad for him to be practically an exile," observed Horatia.

Tristram merely looked at her, then at the laughing group in the middle of the room, and raised his eyebrows. Horatia smiled in spite of herself.

"I see what you mean. Well, I will bestow my sympathy better. It is sad for the Duke to be in exile at Lulworth, with Charles X."

Tristram lowered his voice. "My dear Horatia, there are compensations even in banishment. Imagine living under the same roof with all the relatives you ever had—with, say, your great-grandmother, your grandmother, all your great-aunts, your brothers, your nephews.... That is what the French generally mean by family life—a kind of hotel, with the additional drawback of knowing intimately all the other occupants. They have not our idea of the home that grows up round two people."

Once again Horatia was conscious of that new quality in Tristram's voice, once again she could disregard it, for before she had time to make a reply of any sort she perceived that the Comte de la Roche-Guyon was free, and was coming towards them.

"Ah, here you are!" said Tristram, getting up. "Take my place, and talk to Miss Grenville for a little." Going off, he crossed the room to speak to a neglected spinster in a corner.

M. de la Roche-Guyon sat down in his vacated place without more ado. He gave one glance round the room, and said, "Si nous causions un peu en français?"

His eyes, as dancing and daring as they had been sad yesterday, challenged her to more than conversation in a foreign tongue. And something in Horatia's soul responded.

"Volontiers, Monsieur. What shall we talk about?"

The young man drew his chair a thought nearer. Conversation was rippling all around them; they were isolated in a sea of chatter.

"I will tell you a secret," he said. "I can tell you in French, but you must promise me to forget it in English."

"Very well, I promise."

"You remember, Mademoiselle, that we were late yesterday, M. votre père and I, because M. Hungerford's horse cast a shoe as we came back."

Horatia nodded.

"And how you blamed the groom of M. Hungerford or the blacksmith? Eh bien, I alone was to blame!"

Miss Grenville opened astonished eyes. "I do not understand you, Monsieur. You did not shoe the horse; and you did not make the shoe come off on purpose."

"Mais si, si, si!" reiterated the young Frenchman, his eyes sparkling. "Peccavi nimis, cogitatione, verbo, et opere. I loosened the nails before I left the hillside!"

"But why?"

"I am not sure that I dare tell you, after all! But you have promised me absolution. Eh bien, I wanted to make sure of ... in other words, I thought I would force M. le Recteur to ask me to luncheon.... You are not annoyed?"

Certainly the emotion which shot through Miss Grenville, and which flew its flag in her cheeks was not annoyance. She did not know what it was.

"I should like to give M. Hungerford a golden horseshoe," proceeded the Comte, watching her. "It is true that I need not have——"

"Hush!" said Horatia, "Miss Bailey is going to sing."

In the centre of the room a very blonde lady in white was already displaying her arms to the harp, and her sister, similarly clad, shortly gave commands, in a rather shrill soprano, to light up the festal bower when the stars were gleaming deep, asserting that she had met the shock of the Paynim spears as the mountain meets the sun, but asseverating that naught to her were blood and tears, for her lovely bride was won.

Under cover of the applause which greeted this statement, Tristram made his way back to the couple.

"La Roche-Guyon, be prepared to emulate the songstress. Your fate will be upon you in a moment."

"Misericorde!" exclaimed the young man, and at that moment, indeed, his hostess was seen to be bearing down upon him.

"M. le Comte, you will sing to us, will you not? Oh, I am sure you can sing without your music—you foreigners are so gifted! Do, pray, favour us!" And, other ladies joining in the request, M. le Comte, with none of the self-consciousness of an Englishman similarly placed, seated himself at the piano. "I shall sing to you, ladies," he announced after a moment's thought, "a little old song that was a favourite with Marie Antoinette."

The fair listeners prepared to be affected, expecting regrets for Trianon or sighs from the Temple. But M. de la Roche-Guyon broke into the gallant impertinence of Joli Tambour, and very well he sang it.

So the assembly heard that there was once a drummer boy returning from the wars, from whom, as he passed under the palace window, the princess asked his rose, but that, when he demanded her hand in marriage, the king, her father, refused it, saying he was not rich enough. However, when Joli Tambour replied that he was "fils d'Angleterre," with three ships upon the sea, one full of gold, one of precious stones, and the third to take his love a-sailing, the king said that he might have his daughter. But Joli Tambour refused her, for there were fairer in his own land:

"Dans mon pays, y'en a de plus jolies,

Dans mon pays, y'en a de plus jolies,

Et ran, tan, plan!"

"Rather a slap in the face!" laughed a jolly dowager to Horatia. "The young man evidently wishes to intimate that he is not for marrying any of our daughters."

"Oh, surely he had no such motive!" returned Miss Grenville. "Besides——" she began, and stopped, for it had suddenly occurred to her that she did not really know whether he were married or not.

She had no further speech that evening with the singer, but he appeared, mysteriously and unnecessarily to hand her into the carriage when it came round to the steps, though the master of the house was there for that purpose, and she had her father's assistance as well. But somehow, when it came to the point, it was the Frenchman who put her in.

"Thank you, thank you," said the Rector, as he shut the door. "I hope we shall see you again soon."

Armand de la Roche-Guyon bowed, and, stepping back into the circle of flickering light thrown downwards by the cressets at the foot of the steps, became for the second time that evening a disturbing picture.

CHAPTER VII

(1)

"And so, my dear friends," said the Rector, "terrible as is the idea of the punishment reserved for the ungodly...."

"Poor Papa!" thought Horatia, looking up out of the high Rectory pew at his handsome, kindly face, now clouded with the delivery of the sermon that cost him so much ingenuity.

But she was not listening very attentively. Her gaze wandered on and up to the huge Royal arms that rested on the beam over the chancel arch, over the "When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness." What stories she had told herself about the unicorn once!

Beyond the top of the great three-decker pulpit there was not indeed much that she could see, except the little square carpeted room without a roof in which she sat, for since she had put away childish things she no longer stood upon the seat which ran round three of its four sides. But she knew exactly how the knees of the young men stuck through the railings of the gallery at the end of the church, how red and shiny were their faces, how plastered their Sunday hair. Moreover, she was sure that in the space behind them, occupied by the singers and players, William Bates was fidgetting with his flute, unscrewing it and putting it together again, and the bassoonist was going to sleep. "I can't 'elp it, your Reverence, I really can't; seems as if there was something in this 'ere instrument," he was wont to plead. Horatia wondered whether he would awake before the end of the discourse.

And then, almost without knowing it, she found herself speculating upon what Tristram and his guest were doing. She had hoped (she put it to herself as "thought") that Tristram might have brought the latter over here. But, of course, the Comte de la Roche-Guyon was a Roman Catholic.

Her mind went back to last night. What an extraordinary knack he had of appearing in a different light every time she met him—he seemed to be almost a different person. She counted up the times.... It puzzled her, but she was by now beginning to realise that it interested her too. And what would he be like when he came to say good-bye? The week for which she had understood him to be staying would be up next Wednesday, and Tristram would be sure to bring him over before that.

She wondered if he would ever come to England again....

The Rector was beginning to descend from his eminence, the clerk below was clearing his throat before giving out "Thy dreadful anger, Lord, restrain, and spare a wretch forlorn"—the metrical version of the sixth Psalm—and of the end of the sermon Horatia had not heard a word.

(2)

In the course of a week it had become abundantly clear to Tristram Hungerford that the Comte de la Roche-Guyon, young as he was, had made a close study of the fair sex, if, indeed, he did not consider himself an authority upon it. It was therefore without surprise, if without appreciation, that Tristram listened perforce, this Wednesday morning, to a dissertation on the subject. The two were on their way to Compton Rectory; their horses had dropped to a walk, and under the bright, windy September sky the young Frenchman imparted to his host the fruit of ripe reflection on the dames of Britain.

"Every time that I am in England," he said, gesticulating with his riding-whip, "I am struck afresh with the curious—how do you call it—limitations of the English ladies. They have so much in their favour, and yet—pardon me that I say it—if you desire the fresh toilette, the graceful walk and gesture, ease in conversation, knowledge of coquetry, you must seek for them in France, for a real Englishwoman knows nothing of them."

"But I thought that our English ladies were supposed to model themselves nowadays on those of the Continent," objected Tristram, keeping the ball rolling out of politeness.

Armand de la Roche-Guyon nearly dropped his reins. "Mais, mon Dieu, that makes it worse!" he exclaimed. "In a party of English ladies you can indeed observe that each has taken a hint from the Continent for her dress or her manner, and the result, ma foi, is often to make die of laughter. I have seen ... but that would not interest you ... Tenez, the way an Englishwoman sits down upon a chair, have you ever thought to remark that? It is as if chance alone had caused her to fall there! She sits down without paying the least attention to her dress. But the care with which a Frenchwoman places herself in an armchair, taking hold of her robe on either side, raising her arms gently as a bird spreads its wings! Even if she should be exhausted by laughing or half-fainting from emotion, still her dress will remain untumbled. It is worth remarking, I assure you!"

Certainly these observations would never have occurred to Mr. Hungerford, and to judge by his expression, he had small wish even to make them vicariously. His companion was instantly aware of this.

"Forgive me, mon ami! I see that you think it is not convenable that I should thus criticise your fair compatriots, whom, du reste, I admire from the bottom of my heart. And let me assure you that I have no criticisms for Miss Grenville; she is perfection itself."

"You are very good," replied Tristram, without trying to suppress the irony of his tone.

The corners of the Comte's mouth twitched, and to Tristram's relief he touched up his horse for a sign that the subject was done with. As their hoofs rang sharply on the road the Englishman glanced once or twice at the clear profile beside him, stamped so visibly with the mark of race—and with what else? That was the question. Armand seemed to him such a boy—but not an English boy. Well, he was very attractive, but——

As they were fastening up their horses outside the Rectory, the subject of these speculations suddenly said, with an air of great earnestness, "Mon ami, I wish you would explain to me one trait in the English character which I have never been able to understand. An Englishman is so haughty, he has such high notions of what befits a gentleman, and yet he will receive money from the man who has seduced his wife. If I had run away with the wife of an Englishman, I should expect to give him the chance of putting a bullet into me, but he would expect me to pay him in bank notes the value of the lady—how one estimates that I know not. Can you solve me this problem of the English character?"

Though the Rectory drawing-room was empty, Tristram did not attempt to elucidate this point, and his questioner, whose query was probably only rhetorical, sat and gazed with deep and silent attention at a picture of Daniel in the lions' den, worked in silks, which hung over the sofa. Then the door opened, and admitted the Rector, looking rather worried.

"Ah, M. de la Roche-Guyon, I am very glad to see you! Tristram, this Otmoor business is disgraceful! I hear there was a riot in Oxford on Monday night, and that the mob succeeded in releasing the prisoners."

"It is true," returned Tristram. "We were in Oxford on Monday evening, La Roche-Guyon and I, and saw it——"

"Saw it! Well, was it as bad as I have heard?"

"There was rather a scrimmage," admitted the young man. "The soldiers had no chance against the mob. St. Giles's Fair was on, of course, and it was in St. Giles that they rescued the Otmoor prisoners—about sixty of them—from the waggons."

"And what were the escort about, pray?" demanded Mr. Grenville indignantly. "What were they, by the way?"

"Oxfordshire Yeomanry. They held their own as well as they could, and had rather the advantage, as far as we could see, till they turned down Beaumont Street. Then the crowd got the better of them."

The Rector shrugged his shoulders. "I cannot conceive what you must think of us, M. le Comte," he said, turning to the Frenchman. "You will imagine that the reign of law and order is coming to an end in England."

"As in France," finished Armand good-humouredly. "Ma foi, M. le Recteur, it has reminded me a little of the Days of July; I own that I have not expected to see street fighting in England, and in a city so calm, so academic as Oxford! But one never knows. There was one soldier—a sergeant I think—who ceased not to fight till he was disabled. The populace were fierce against him ... It is strange, how John Bull loves not the military. I have remarked it before. (These observations are harmless, mon ami, is it not?) John Bull thinks much more of the taxes which he pays to keep up the army than he does of military glory. That he calls stuff. Is not that so?"

"What you say is profoundly true," answered Mr. Grenville, impressed; but at that moment the door opened and Horatia came in.

An "Oh!" of surprise escaped her, for she imagined the young Frenchman to have gone, and without taking leave.

"You are a ghost!" she said to him, recovering herself. "I thought you were leaving us to-day."

Tristram broke in. "I have persuaded M. de la Roche-Guyon to stay till the beginning of next week, because I had the idea that he might care to go to the Charity Ball which Lady Carte is getting up on Monday, and also I thought of arranging my little dinner-party for this Saturday, if the date suits you and the Rector? I know that it is all right for Dormer."

Miss Grenville looked at her father. "That will be charming. It will do excellently for us. May we ask if there is to be anyone else besides Mr. Dormer?"

"Yes, I am going on now to ask the Edward Puseys; they are still at Pusey with Lady Lucy, I believe."

"I think they must be," corroborated Horatia, "for I met him driving his wife over to call on the Mainwarings two or three days ago. He did not look much as if he were thinking of what he was doing."

"I am glad that you are going to ask them, Tristram," commented the Rector, who had known the Pusey brothers since they were boys. "That young man's learning is stupendous. Too much was made, in my opinion, of his supposed sympathy with the new German theology, and I am glad that he did get the Chair of Hebrew."

"And I am glad too," added his daughter, "because they have such comfortable lodgings at Christ Church. I hope I shall stay there again some day. I like Mrs. Pusey, and it is so romantic to think that they waited ten years for each other, but I am rather frightened of him."

"Permit me to say that I don't believe you are really frightened of anybody in the world," observed Tristram smiling.

"Tristram, how can you say so! I am dust and ashes before Papa when he is really cross—and terrified of you, when you are in your conscience mood.—Is there anyone else?"

"We are short of ladies, and I thought it would interest M. de la Roche-Guyon to meet the Trenchards, who are staying just now with their aunt, so I shall ask her to come and bring them."

"Very nice," murmured the Rector. "Beautiful girls, if they are like their elder sisters—though, of course, none of them could ever compare with their step-sister, the French one."

Horatia turned to Armand, who had been sitting unusually silent. "Doesn't it flatter you, Monsieur, that Papa's ideal woman should be French?"

"Mademoiselle," returned the Comte instantly, with an inclination, "our ideal women are always of another nationality than our own!"

Tristram got up. "Well, we must be getting on, if that is settled, and you can both come on Saturday." M. de la Roche-Guyon also rose, very slowly.

"No, Tristram," interjected the Rector, laying hold of his arm, "you positively must stay ten minutes, because I've had this letter from Liverpool about James Stack and his wife emigrating to Canada. I had thought I should be able to get them off almost at once, but the shipping company say—there, you'd better see it." He fumbled in his pockets. "Horatia, suppose you take M. de la Roche-Guyon into the garden for five minutes."

Horatia was preceding the guest down the path when he said softly behind her: "There are advantages, after all, in Canada's having passed into English hands. As a Frenchman, I never expected to admit them."

"Why, what"—began Miss Grenville, stopping, and then suddenly finding his meaning quite clear. She coloured, was angry with herself, and tried to retrieve her slip by saying, "Papa has helped two or three of the parish to emigrate out there."

Armand was now walking beside her, along the line of flowers where autumn had begun to lay a hand in the week that had passed since he had sat there. But he showed no disposition to follow up his sally. On the contrary he looked rather moody, almost cross. It was a new phase. And after a moment or two he said, kicking a stone along the path:

"I am not looking forward to this dinner-party, Mademoiselle. Mr. Hungerford is too kind. What have you and I to do with these grave persons? I don't know Hebrew!"

It was new to Horatia to be classed among the more frivolous portion of an assembly, and classed there by, and in conjunction with, a young man. "Ah, but you forget the Trenchard girls," she said lightly. "They do not know Hebrew either, and they are very pretty. Their mother is French; have you not heard about them?"

"Mr. Hungerford told me something, but I am afraid I did not listen; I was not interested."

"But you ought to be interested. It is rather romantic. Their mother, when she was quite young, was a lady-in-waiting to Madame Elisabeth. She fled to England, and her lover—who was a Frenchman, of course—fought through the Vendean war and came to England and married her. But next year he went back with the expedition to Quiberon, and was killed there. I can't remember his name. Then she married Mr. Trenchard, a Suffolk squire, and had several children, I think about eight—anyhow Trenchards have been staying here with Mrs. Willoughby, who is Mr. Trenchard's sister, ever since I can remember. And once I saw Mrs. Trenchard herself; somehow she did not look as if she had been through all those things as a girl."

Her hearer lent her sufficient interest, at any rate he was looking at her, a tiny frown between his dark eyebrows. "But you spoke of another daughter?"

"The child of the Vendean—born after his death, I believe. I never saw her. But Papa remembers her; more beautiful and gracious than one can possibly imagine, he says. She went into a convent in Rome."

M. de la Roche-Guyon said nothing, and having come to the end of the path Horatia stooped to a late rose in the border. She was finding his evident ill-humour oddly disturbing.

"Let us speak of the ball on Monday—my last day," he said watching her. "How many dances will you vouchsafe me—in the cause of charity?"

And Miss Grenville, plucking the wet rose, found herself replying, to her no small amazement:

"That depends on Mr. Hungerford."

"Comment!" exclaimed the young Frenchman, stepping backwards. "Mais, juste ciel, il n'est pas votre fiancé!" His eyes blazed at her, and he had quite perceptibly paled; it was obvious that he was unaware of his lapse into his own tongue.

"Certainly not," replied Horatia with dignity. (She had been right about his eyes; they could look fury.) "But he is a very old friend and kinsman, and we always arrange to dance so many together."

Armand de la Roche-Guyon made a gesture, and smiled, quite sweetly. "I understand—mais parfaitement! Comme vous êtes femme ... adorablement femme!" He touched her hand a second, and Tristram and the Rector came down the path.

CHAPTER VIII

(1)

Mr. Hungerford's little dinner-party had gone the way of all dinner-parties. The Rector had pronounced it, from his point of view, a decided success. "A most enjoyable evening, my dear," he said to Horatia, as they were driving home. "Whatever else that man Dormer of Oriel is or is not, he is a brilliant talker when he pleases. And I had a good talk with Edward Pusey afterwards in the drawing-room. The Arabic catalogue at the Bodleian is a colossal piece of work, but from what he told me I think his plans are too ambitious—not beyond his scholarship, mark you, but beyond his physical strength. He confessed to me that he sometimes almost envied the bricklayers whom he saw at work in the streets, the drudgery was so great."

"But Mr. Pusey is a young man, and he needn't make Arabic catalogues unless he wants to," Horatia had responded rather unsympathetically. For she had not found the party so delightful. She had been taken in by Mr. Pusey, and though Armand de la Roche-Guyon sat on her other hand, his partner, Miss Arabella Trenchard, had talked to him a great deal, and he had seemed to like it. It was quite natural, of course; he probably liked everybody, and Miss Trenchard was very pretty, much prettier than she herself; so that it was no wonder if M. de la Roche-Guyon had been by no means as bored as he had predicted. But, at all events, he had found his way straight to her in the drawing-room afterwards, and chatted to her ... till Mr. Dormer, showing a most unusual taste for her society, had come and made a third ... and, to be quite just, had talked so delightfully that she almost forgave him the intrusion, at the time. Afterwards, it rankled increasingly.

But now it was Monday morning, the morning of the dance, and Horatia, in the drawing-room putting some asters into a bowl, was aware of being in a state of causeless and febrile excitement. She could not but ask herself what there was in a dance so to excite her; she was not a young girl any more; she had been to many such. Yet she was conscious that this ball was clothed in her imagination with the glamour of an untasted pleasure, and that the thought of it was like some splendid palace built on the edge of a precipice, beyond which there was nothing.

She had just carried the bowl to the mantel-shelf when, without warning, M. de la Roche-Guyon was announced to her. Horatia was startled, almost discomposed, and the vessel, which was "Wheatsheaf" Bow, narrowly escaped destruction.

"Mr. Hungerford sent me with a note," said the young Frenchman apologetically. "That is my excuse for deranging you so early, Mademoiselle; you must forgive me. It is about to-night."

She took the letter and read:

"My dear Horatia,—

"I am obliged to go into Oxford this evening to meet Mr. Rose, a man from Cambridge, at Dormer's rooms, and cannot possibly return in time for the Charity Ball; in fact I shall have to spend the night in Oxford. Would you and the Rector be so kind as to consider M. de la Roche-Guyon as of your party? There is of course no need for him actually to accompany you. It is most unfortunate that this summons should have come just now, and that I must reluctantly forgo an evening to which I had looked forward with so much pleasure. I shall come to dinner, if I may, when I am at liberty, and make my apologies to you in person.—T.H."

Miss Grenville, on reading these lines, stamped her foot.

"How tiresome, O how tiresome! Why could not Tristram have gone to Oxford any other night!"

"You are sorry that Mr. Hungerford cannot come to the dance?" inquired the Comte, who seemed already acquainted with the purport of the note.

"Why, of course!" flashed Horatia, out of her burst of indignation. "Are you, then, glad of it, Monsieur?"

"In one sense, yes," replied M. de la Roche-Guyon coolly. "Because now I can ask for the dances of your kinsman as well as for my own."

Miss Grenville saw fit to take no notice of this sentiment, continuing along her own line of thought.

"How like Mr. Dormer! Everything must give way to what Mr. Dormer arranges and wishes. I have no patience with it—I am sure you do not like him either!"

"Mon Dieu, I should think I did not," replied the young man warmly, "considering that he spoilt my evening on Saturday! He might have left us that quarter of an hour in the drawing-room. I could almost believe that he did it on purpose.... No, Mr. Dormer does not amuse me."

"You have seen a good deal of him," said Horatia, restored to good humour, for she discerned a common feeling.

Armand made something of a grimace. "Mr. Hungerford has been kind enough to take me to see him twice. I do not like priests. They know too much."

"But Mr. Dormer is not a priest," returned Horatia, half amused.

"Well, perhaps not, mais il en a l'air, and he needs only the ... what is it, la soutane?—the cassock, yes, and the sash that the delusion should be complete. Besides, he has the book."

"What book?" asked Horatia, mystified.

"The priest's book, the breviary. It was lying open on his table when we went in to see him at the college of Oriel. Almost I fancied myself chez Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon, my cousin."

"Oh, I understand!" said Horatia. "He is translating some of the hymns from the Paris Breviary—why, I don't know. I think I remember Tristram telling me about it in the spring. Mr. Dormer and several of the other Fellows at Oriel are what is known as High Church, and they are always doing queer things."

"High Church?" queried the young Frenchman, "what is that? And what queer things is it that they do?"

"Oh, it's so boring," said Miss Grenville wearily. "They think the Church of England is in danger; I don't know why, for it has gone on comfortably enough all these years without them. So they meet and talk a great deal about it—in fact, that is no doubt why Tristram has so tiresomely to go into Oxford this evening—fresh alarums and excursions, I expect... Papa was very much shocked when he heard Mr. Froude say that the Reformation was a mistake, but when I told him afterwards that I thought they had better all turn Papists, and have done with it, he didn't like that either ... O forgive me! What have I said!" The colour rushed over her face. "I had forgotten for the moment; of course you are a Catholic yourself."

"But I had rather that you forgot it," exclaimed the young Frenchman, with an expressive gesture. "I am a Catholic, it is true, because—well, because one has to be. Royalism and the Church stand together; but I am not devout—pray do not think so!"

Horatia hastened to assure him that she had never suspected him of this, and they both laughed.

When he had gone she went upstairs and looked at the gown that she was to wear that night to dance in the palace which would crumble to ruins at daybreak.

(2)

The aching elbows of the fiddlers had several times been eased by surreptitious potations; the candles were beginning to gutter, chaperons' heads to nod sleepily. A light dust hung in the air from the action of so many pairs of twinkling feet upon the beeswax, and the Hon. and Rev. Stephen Grenville was distinctly conscious of a desire for his bed. Nor did the converse in which he was entangled with an elderly entomologist staying in the neighbourhood really reconcile him to sitting through so many quadrilles and country dances—to hearing selections from La Gazza Ladra give place to Basque Roads, Der Freischütz to Drops of Brandy. The Rector had no enthusiasm for lepidoptera, and he could by no means get the collector of beetles to listen to his own views on monoliths. Not inappropriately did the entomologist discourse of the butterflies of Berkshire, its obscurer moths, in this big room cleared for the Charity Ball and full of a throng as bright and moving, but the scientific mind does not unbend to these analogies, and it might have been conjectured that he did not even see the fair guests had he not, during a waltz, suddenly inquired:

"Who is that extremely attractive young lady dancing with the French count—there, in yellow—a prodigious fine dancer?"

Probably one of the Trenchard girls, thought the Rector, and looked. But no! He pursed his lips. "That is my daughter," quoth he.

"Dear, dear," observed the entomologist, human after all, and he put on his glasses the better to observe the phenomenon. "My dear Mr. Grenville, I congratulate you, I do indeed. A most charming girl."

Flushed and smiling, Horatia whirled slowly past. No need to ask if she found her partner congenial. The Rector's eyes followed the couple, and it began to dawn upon him that he had been thus following them, unconsciously, a good many times that evening. Was this really so? Even as the question occurred to him, the Squire, beaming in his blue, gilt-buttoned evening coat, appeared on his other side.

"Hallo, Rector," he said cheerfully. "Going well, ain't it? That young French spark seems to be enjoying himself. They make a fine couple, eh?"

"Who do?" asked Mr. Grenville rather unwisely, as the golden dress came past again.

"Why, your girl and he, of course," said the Squire, with all the effect of a wink. "There they go. How would you like her as Madame de—what's the fellow's name?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Mainwaring," said the Rector rather tartly. "We have had to be civil to the young man because he is Hungerford's friend, and no doubt he finds my girl, who speaks French well, is easy to get on with——"

"Yes, especially as his own English is so bad," retorted the Squire grinning. "Well, well, we're only young once. I remember when I first met my wife.... You're not thinking of going before it's over, Rector?"

Mr. Grenville put back his watch. "It is a good deal later than I thought. I told Dawes to be here at twelve o'clock."

No consciousness of eyes paternal, entomological or matronly was on Horatia during that last intoxicating waltz. She loved dancing, and she had danced a good deal, but never with a partner like this.

The music stopped (a little out of tune).

"Are you giddy?" asked Armand tenderly.

"A little," said Horatia, with truth. "It is so hot..."

He drew her hand a little further through his arm. "Here is a doorway. Where does it lead to? Voyons ... ah, the library, and empty. Quelle chance! On est bien ici, n'est-ce pas? See, here is a chair; give me your fan."

But she would not sit down.

"I must go back to Papa."

"Not yet. He will have you all the days, and I have only these so few moments more of you."

"You are really leaving to-morrow?" asked Horatia in a conventional tone.

"Si fait. I return to Lulworth, and thence to Paris. And you will never think of me again."

Horatia did not answer this time, for she found she could not.

Armand stopped fanning. "I shall have only this to remember you by, for I mean to keep it," he said, looking down at the painted ivory in his hand. "Mais il suffira. Yes, I hear them, the violins; il faut s'en aller: il faut se dire adieu.... Nous ne danserons plus ensemble ... Adieu, adieu, toute belle, adieu pour jamais!"

He crushed her hands fiercely to his lips. Her head whirled a second; then she tore them away.

"Please go ... ask Papa to come and fetch me here ... I will not go back into the room...."

He looked at her strangely, almost wildly, but she would not meet his eyes. "Please go," she reiterated faintly, and Armand, suddenly dropping on one knee, put his lips to the hem of her dress—and was gone.

And loud through the strains of The New-Rigged Ship, now pouring under the archway, she heard the heartless marching beat of Joli Tambour.

"Dans mon pays, y'en a de plus jolies,

Dans mon pays, y'en a de plus jolies,

Et ran, tan, plan!"

Mr. Grenville hurried in almost immediately, his daughter's cloak on his arm. Horatia was lying back in a big leather chair. She looked curiously white, but roused at once.

"Is that my cloak? Thank you, Papa, very much. It is time to go, is it not, though it is not quite over."

"That is what I was thinking, my dear," said the Rector, putting the swansdown over her. "I believe we have been keeping Dawes waiting. Have you got everything—your gloves, your fan?"

"Everything I want, thank you, Papa."

The old fat horses and the careful Dawes did not devour the five miles that lay between them and home. After a few desultory remarks, both father and daughter relapsed into silence, each in a corner of the barouche. But Horatia had drawn off her gloves, and in the darkness was pulling and twisting them into a rope, endeavouring to keep down the sobs which rose chokingly in her throat. Had anything in the world ever hurt like this? All the while the horses' hoofs beat out the refrain, relentless, and so horribly gay. "Et ran, tan, plan. Et ran, tan, plan!" With all her desperate fight for composure she only succeeded in keeping back the main violence of the storm; the smaller rain-clouds broke despite herself, and, quietly as she wept, the Rector was aware of it.

"My darling, what is it?" he said, putting out a hand to her.

"Nothing," replied Horatia, swallowing the tears. "I am tired ... and stupid ... I danced too much..."

("Dans mon pays y'en a de plus jolies,

Dans mon pays y'en a de plus jolies!")

"I thought you looked tired, my love," replied Mr. Grenville, exceedingly alarmed but (he hoped) tactful. "I heard one or two people saying that the floor was not good. Come, child, put your head here; perhaps you will be more comfortable; and we shall soon be home."

Whether or no he knew why she wept, Horatia could not resist the kind voice, and all the rest of the way her elaborately dressed head lay against her father's shoulder.

She kissed him silently when they got in. No, she did not want her maid. Again she repeated that she was only tired; she would be all right in the morning, and so went to her room.

Fool, fool, that he had been! But what had happened? At any rate they had not come to an understanding; that was obvious. And, thank God, the young man was going away to-morrow. But he could not bear to see her suffer. Twice he went and listened shame-facedly at her door; she was sobbing, sobbing as if her heart would break—she who never cried! At dawn, when the birds were twittering, he went again; she was quiet. He prayed God she slept. It was more than he could do.