Chapter XX

The Necklace Again

"After all," Ivor said, as he walked with the Anarchist through the gardens of the Casino, now sleeping with doubled magic under a starry sky, "this isn't such a beastly hole. I've had a ripping time altogether."

De Konski looked at the bright-eyed, smiling face in amazed curiosity, touched with pity. He thought the look directed towards the lighted Casino somewhat wistful, and reflected that only an hour or two and the sumptuous farewell dinner they had just had at Giro's together divided this light-hearted youth from the despairing and perverse prodigal of the afternoon. The storm that had rushed up in a moment in indigo shadow from behind Bordighera had not passed more quickly than this young man's anguish and inward conflict.

"Thanks to you, I've come through this rotten business without a scratch," the laughing lips added. "If only----"

"If only?" echoed the Anarchist. "Ah! well for you that your word is given. Nothing short of that would keep you straight--off that rock."

"Oh, that's all right, thanks to you."

"And to no one else, Ivor? That was a long talk in the gardens this afternoon."

"Oh well, we had been teaing at Rumpelmayer's with that pretty little Mrs. Allonby--awfully jolly little woman--"

"Eh? what?" growled the Anarchist, an angry flame in his eye.

"--She's in an awful hole, that little woman. Turned out of her hotel, and can't find fresh quarters anywhere. I was recommending Villa Gilardoni."

"What do you mean by turned out?" cried the Anarchist savagely.

"The poor little woman took it very pluckily--she told it as a ripping joke. She doesn't suspect your Turbia friend's tongue may have had a hand in it"--an inarticulate snarl broke from the Anarchist--"the hotel people simply told her to clear out, bag and baggage. She's been to every blessed hotel in Mentone this afternoon, and found them all crammed full----"

"Ah! And you were discussing that lady's affairs with Miss Somers in the gardens?"

"I was showing Miss Somers the way to the Villa. I say, what the deuce is the matter, de Konski?"

"Nothing, nothing. Except that I must be off or lose the last lift. Goodnight. If only--remember."

But there was another and very different _if_ to what the Anarchist suspected in the young man's heart. If Agatha had only stooped to pick him up! Her cruelty spoilt all. He had certainly asked much of her, he acknowledged to himself, but less would have been nothing, for love, he told himself, gives all or nothing. While the countess----

On reaching his hotel he found a letter from his mother, and read it more than once. What there was in that letter more than in countless others she had written, he could not say; it was tender and warm and intimate with a sort of gay comradeship infrequent in maternal letters--but so were all her letters. Still, in this he found something that brought the water to his eyes, and the old childish confidence and comfort to his heart, and made him very glad and thankful to have signed that paper in the afternoon. There was a little folded slip from a sister inside the envelope. "So glad you are coming home," it said; "mother is counting the days. She is not quite herself lately, and seems to be fretting for you."

After all, there is no love like a mother's, especially when life is hard and hearts are wounded and sore.

The poor countess's image had already grown dim and indistinct; it seemed ages since that morning's scene; the fumes of that intoxication had almost evaporated; the evil enchantment nearly faded. He wondered at having been so much moved by that passionate, self-abnegating devotion, when a vague memory of it flitted across his mind, with a pity that was more akin to contempt than love. Of course Agatha had been right in reminding him of his mother's objection to his choice of herself; but equally of course, had she cared for him, all that would have been thrown to the winds. People's relations--especially mothers--always make a point of objecting to and hindering the course of true love, while lovers always make a point of overriding all such hindrances and defying all such objections--it was an accepted part of the game, absolutely orthodox.

Flinging things into suit-cases and kit-bags next morning, he remembered that he had no little keepsake to take home to the mother, and ran out to ransack the shops crammed with glittering inutilities for something to please her. Under present impecunious circumstances, this could only be done by going home second-class, and Monte Carlo shops scarcely lend themselves to modest gifts; customers in that City of Dis are expected to reckon in golden four-louis pieces. It was a bewildering and irritating thing to a hurried man to review those windows, ablaze with diamonds and glowing with rubies, piled with rich-scented russia leathers, clasped and bound and fitted with gold and silver inconveniences of every description, or run the eye over daintily carved ivories, costly bric-à-brac, gorgeous apparel, and priceless lace, in search of something at once exquisite, suitable, and inexpensive.

He was consigning the total merchandise of Monte Carlo to perdition, in a last and frantically hopeless marshalling of a jeweller's window, when his eye was caught by a necklace of costly gems and beautiful workmanship, at which he gazed in open-mouthed amazement for some seconds. The design, unusual and unmistakable, the jewels--sapphires set with diamonds--all were familiar and recognizable at a glance. It was an exact duplicate of the Somers sapphires, the necklace inherited by Agatha, and constituting her chief fortune, of the value of some thousands of pounds--the necklace she had often been counselled by outsiders to sell, but never by the family--and had always consistently refused to part with. She had worn that necklace at his coming-of-age dance, the day on which he had definitely recognized the nature of his feelings for her. It was spoken of in the family as her dowry. There it lay, sparkling and quivering in the clear morning sunlight, among stars, tiaras, collars, and _rivières_ of diamonds, and ornaments set with every known jewel. It shone out with a distinction all its own from these splendid and costly things, an exact counterpart of Agatha's necklace, here for sale, in this very Monte Carlo shop before his dazed eyes; the gems, winking and sparkling with many colours, seemed alive and beckoning to him, burdened with secrets they longed to tell. In a moment he was in the shop, stammering in unintelligible French, and pointing to the necklace.

"Oui, oui, M'sieur; the sapphires are exceptionally fine and the diamonds of good water," the lady at the counter acknowledged; "the value being so great we are willing to take much less than they are worth. Yes; it is fresh in the window this morning. Second-hand? But naturally; the workmanship, very fine and of exquisite art, is long out of date. Such things are no longer made. It is absolutely unique."

"It came from England?" he asked in his native tongue. "It must have come from England. It is known; it has a history. There is but one necklace like that, and I've known it all my life."

"On the contrary," said the proprietor, stepping across from the other side of the shop, and desirous of showing his undoubted right to it, "the necklace was sold to me only yesterday by M. Mosson, the well-known M. Mosson, with whom we frequently have dealings of this kind. Sometimes we sell them on commission, sometimes we buy them outright. But M. Mosson is careful in the extreme. He takes nothing of which the proprietorship is doubtful. The history of this beautiful and unique specimen of jeweller's art is well-known to him. But Monsieur is suffering? A glass of water? Cognac?"

Ivor, white and dizzy, had dropped into an armchair in the middle of the shop, and was staring stupidly before him, trying to piece the thing out in his mind, and realize what it meant, while the jeweller, who had paid a sum down, instead of selling on commission this time, was a little anxious lest the astute Mosson should have made a mistake. He remembered that the sum the usurer had taken was known by both of them to be far under the real value, and that he had seemed anxious to have the money without delay. It was unlike that benefactor of his species to betray anxiety on any subject.

"Has Mosson come back?" Ivor gasped presently, "or is he still at that place up in the mountains?" and learnt in reply that Mr. Mosson had so far refreshed himself by his stay in that sequestered region that he had returned to his well-known villa hard by, upon hearing which Ivor at once rushed from the shop and hurried in the direction of the villa, to the disquietude of the jeweller, who repaired without loss of time to a private room to discuss the matter with Madame.

"What, again?" the philanthropist asked with a cynical smile, when his young client burst in upon his pious reflections and calculations; "and accounts closed only yesterday? Now this is most unfortunate--because I am not in a position to accommodate you at present, M. Paul."

"The necklace," the boy gasped, "the necklace?"

"H'm?"

"Where did you get that sapphire and diamond necklace that you sold to M. Strozzi yesterday?"

"That, my young friend, is entirely my affair."

"Look here, Mosson, somebody, some friend of mine, yesterday, wiped off what I owed you to the last penny."

"Quite so. An unknown friend--on conditions. Now that is done. Good morning. Au revoir, I must not say."

"That friend was the owner of the necklace."

"If you say so, I must believe it."

"You can't deny that she was. Besides, there can't be a duplicate--that's beyond a coincidence."

"If Monsieur is so well informed on a subject that I confess has little interest for me, why waste valuable time in vain interrogations? For the rest, with regard to the debt and conditions, the transaction was confidential, the person who negotiated it having ensured my silence upon the matter. So once more, M. Paul, I wish you good day, and better luck at the game of life than you have had of late at roulette."

Ivor looked steadily at the sharp features and cold glittering eyes, not unconscious of the cynical tolerant contempt expressed in the thin, tight-drawn lips, and was quite sure.

Perhaps, after all, he was having better luck at the game of life than he had hoped or deserved; perhaps, after all, she had picked him out of the gutter, though she would not risk the slightest splash on her own white raiment to save him. Perhaps. His head went round dizzily as he walked blindly from the usurer's house, trying to realize what this meant for both of them. She had set him free; had already done it yesterday, when she had seemed so hard and pitiless, and upbraided him so hotly and sternly; she had set him free at the sacrifice of her one earthly treasure, her little fortune, at the cost of who knows what repulsion and disgust in dealing with the notorious Spider. _Could_ she have approached the man personally? Yet how else could she have effected this? She had loved those jewels; they had meant so much for her; their history, their associations, the tradition of good fortune they brought to their owner--all had been discussed and laughed over and made a handle for teasing, many and many a time, from the days when they were children at play. Then a cold shiver went through him at the sudden thought that she was herself in straits--working for money--she might have pledged them for her own needs. But they had not been pledged, unless to Mosson. Yes, that might be; Mosson was such a beast, they being pledged to him and unredeemed, he might have realized his debt upon them. Again, no--what need could she possibly have of such a sum of money as that? Oh no, there could be no doubt, none whatever. The necklace had been sold for _him_. De Konski knew; but there was no time to get at him. He sat on a bench under a palm, with his face in his hands, staring into the clear brook that rippled among water-lilies and maidenhair over an artificial rock-bed, and thought.

Hard work this thinking to the poor, light-hearted lad. He had thought more in the last few days than ever in his life before, and it had taken the rounded outlines of youth from his face, deepened his eyes, made shadows under them, and given firmness to a too facile mouth. What a beast he had been yesterday in the gardens when the storm was coming up over Bordighera; no wonder she had been repelled; no wonder such selfish madness had been flouted and condemned. He seemed to be waking out of a long, fantastic dream or some wild, prolonged delirium to a sober, sane view of life. Tears came into his eyes, and dropped slowly on the gravel between his feet. A memory of the countess yesterday, with glowing eyes and thrilling voice, made him shiver; the thought of her beauty gave him a sensation of physical nausea. But yesterday, as yesterdays sometimes are, was long and long ago. And here he was, with scarcely two hours to spare before catching the last possible train home. And there was only one thing to be done, and that was impossible.

Agatha, in the meantime, had no suspicion of what was passing in her prodigal's mind. She had made her last throw for him and lost. She could only bow her head before an unsearchable dispensation and wait. Her first fierce participation in the execution of the unfortunate Dorris had soon given place to a compunction which prompted her to withdraw, after a vain attempt to stem the torrent of the long-pent wrath of the hotel. She therefore had a quieter conscience than some of the rest, and quickly dismissed the business from her mind. She had quieted Mrs. Boundrish's fears of spotted fever by persuading her that the sweet child was only a little hysterical, a view of the case shortly afterwards confirmed by Mrs. Allonby, who recommended solitude and cheerfully prophesied slumber. This charitable office accomplished, the woman of mystery fared forth in the afternoon sunshine to resume the visit of inquiry to Villa Gilardoni, interrupted by the storm on the previous day, taking with her some papers in the cipher that stamped her with Heaven knows what iniquities in the eyes of Ermengarde, and consulting them as she went down the mule-path, as if they contained instructions or indications of what to do next.

The convent walk was no longer a sanctuary for meditation; she had been there in the morning and found men busy opening and cleaning and setting in order both the church and the monastery. At their suggestion she had gone in, inspected the empty cells, simply but sufficiently furnished with bed and table, desk and bookshelf--a book here, a pen there, pointed to recent suddenly interrupted occupation--and wondered over the quiet, harmless, and probably happy and useful lives of the men who had been thrust out, and how they fared now in the loud, perplexing world, and what disgust or disappointment might have driven some of them into this haven of stillness.

She had inspected and admired the church, beautifully and lovingly adorned, though so plain outside, and beautifully kept as if in constant use, and had been touched by the votive offerings hung about on the walls--ships chiefly, with here a gun, here a crutch and there a heart--all so quaint to unaccustomed eyes; and the thought of all the unsuspected heart-breaks and secret agonies of prayer, in that quiet mountain solitude alone, besides those throbbing and aching in the great, lonely, million-peopled world outside, rolled up like a huge tidal wave and crashed upon her heart. But that some prayers were answered, some secret agonies had happy ending, the quaint votive offerings bore witness, filling her with a hope full of peace, and assuring her that some day, ever so distant perhaps, but some day, before the ending of time, all humble, heartfelt prayers of earnest faith and unselfish love would at last bring forth some fruit.

What a different world to-day, sunning itself in splendour of blue and gold and green, to that of yesterday, when the darkness of storm and the chill lash of hail had been over all. Everything seemed made for happiness; the gladness of flowers blooming in every crack and crevice, pink rock-roses creeping about the rocky path, white and pink cistus starring the bushes on every slope, lavender spikes here, and tall purple and black iris there, masses of peach-bloom edging olive-woods, with many an unknown, unconsidered blossom, all turned sweet faces in gladness to the sunshine; all the deep dark verdure of gorge and mountain-flank, with vine and garden-growth about terrace and house, seemed as if breathing a deep and joyous and peaceful life round village and cot, while ever-soaring sunlit mountain-peaks rushed up with glad and silent aspiration into the pure dark sky, the hill-spurs at their feet thrusting many a noble, firm-based buttress far out into the dark splendour of a sapphire and turquoise sea. Even the clean-walled, smokeless town and white ribbon of road, over which toy vehicles and horses and tiny doll-men crawled along the torrent-brink, in oleander shade far below, seemed much too gay and gladsome to admit any shadow of tragedy or sting of pain.

And yet what heart-break, what despair, what loneliness of heart might be--nay, must be--there, hidden and silently borne with more or less valour; and how the very gladsomeness and glory of all this lovely earth seemed to put a sharper knife-edge on the pain, that turned and turned insupportably in the heart, Agatha mused in the weariness and dull apathy weighing her down after yesterday's sharp suffering.

What was life worth, after all, at best? How could people go on, year in, year out, under their tragic burdens and sordid pains? How many a weary year of sunless, monotonous suffering she would have to drag out, unless some merciful mischance befell her body and released her soul, she sighed, with a great yearning for the peace of not being--in the strong deep agony of youth, that has so many prospective years to endure in. And then, suddenly, at the turn leading to the convent cross, she came face to face with a figure hurrying with springing steps up the path by the deserted shrines, and the simultaneous surprised cry of "Ivor!" and "Agatha!" and the look flashed from eye to eye in one moment changed all the world and made everything clear to each, as they stood silent, each with both hands outstretched and clasping the other's.

There was a look never seen before in Ivor's face, and a soft gladness unknown in Agatha's; both faces were in clear sunlight outlined upon a rock-wall overhung by the quaint, goblin-handed boughs of prickly pear.

"Aggie," he cried, "dear, dearest Aggie, I was a beast yesterday. I _was_ a beast! You were right. All you said was true. I had no right to ask such things of you--no man has of any woman. Yet you _had_ saved me, you _had_ picked me out of the gutter all the time. No, it's no use saying anything. I saw the necklace and guessed. The beast sold it to Strozzi--and made upon it, trust him! It's in Strozzi's window. Aggie, how could you? The dear old necklace! I'm not worth it, my dear--no, not worth picking out of the mud. But I will be--at least, I won't be the cur I've been. And some day--some day, perhaps--at least, if you're not bound to the long artist-man--perhaps--oh! I shall never be fit to look to you--Don't talk of my mother--she'll be ready for anything after this. I wish I hadn't been such a brute to you. It's--it's as if I had been drunk all along--but not with wine; and now, now at last I've waked up, sober--quite sober, Aggie--darling."

What she said, or if she said anything, she knew not and never knew; nor did he. There was one kiss, too spontaneous, reciprocal and inevitable to be thought of except as a matter of course, though the first since the old baby-kissing days; and then he was gone, racing for his train, that was perilously near the starting-time now. But he turned suddenly by the shrine where she had seen him on that first evening with the countess, for one last look. "Don't have the long painter-man," he cried; "he's too old; he really is; de Vieuxbois told me. And nobody's good enough for you, no, not by half." Then, with some of the old boyish gaiety lighting his face again, he vanished in the soft olive-shadows, racing for dear life.

The woman of mystery, bewildered and half stunned, and vaguely wondering who de Vieuxbois was, and what he had told Ivor, and what would happen if Ivor lost his train and so broke his leave, and how much Ivor's mother would know of the transaction of the necklace, and seeing a deeper, purer blue on the velvet calm of the windless sea, and a more golden depth in the warm sunlight, and a greater gladness and glory on everything, went quietly on her way to Villa Gilardoni.

As to Ermengarde, on whose behalf Villa Gilardoni was to be inspected, she no longer wished to go anywhere except home--that is to say, somewhere within reach of Charlie and her mother. Those two she instinctively longed for and no others; the boy, because his ignorance and childish selfishness made him uncritical and kept his clinging affection unimpaired; the mother, because the sympathetic insight and indestructible unselfishness of the love that protects and cherishes can be trusted to know the worst, and only grow deeper and more pitiful with the knowledge. As for Arthur, his image inspired a mixture of terror and resentment. His unkindness, his want of feeling and sympathy, had sent her all alone into a far-off, unfamiliar, incomprehensible world, in which she had made stupid mistakes, played the fool generally, and proved herself quite unfit to be alone and unguided. If there had been anyone near to confide in, to point things out, to discuss things frankly, she could never have made such a fool of herself.

And where was Arthur all this time? Arthur, the poor man, who six weeks ago could afford no holiday jaunt either for wife or self--until she was fairly out of the way. Then he had suddenly flamed across the sky, a meteor of literary brilliance, and betaken himself to mysterious regions of private enjoyment, whence only the most meagre accounts of his goings on were allowed to trickle at wide intervals--that he was well and _busy_ and uncertain in his movements, that he hoped she was stronger, and was glad she appeared to be enjoying the foreign trip, and advised her to be careful not to risk chills in sudden changes of climate--nothing more. Apparently Arthur had done with her, and, casting off all domestic ties, was recklessly plunging into wild, unknown vortices of pleasure, Heaven only knew where, but, presumably, where there were no post-offices.

When Mrs. Allonby left the unlucky Dorris smothering her sobs and confessing her follies that sunny sweet afternoon, she felt exceedingly cheap and small--even cheaper and smaller than when she had unexpectedly closed an afternoon of shocked moralizing on the sinful pleasures of gambling and pigeon-shooting by landing herself on the Casino steps, too completely cleaned out by roulette to have the price of a cup of tea left. Madame Bontemps' gratuitous information that morning had greatly enlightened her on many subjects. She knew now the meaning of many once incomprehensible things, and especially why she had been asked to leave the hotel--yes; and she remembered that the woman of mystery, whose fallen nature was to have been uplifted by the example and infection of her own exalted and unspotted disposition, and Ivor Paul, the wastrel, had looked as if they perfectly understood the cause of the mischance that she had so light-heartedly and recklessly related to them at Rumpelmayer's--the half-smile on each face was guarantee of that--yes; and she remembered that when Agatha learnt that the fury of Madame had been preceded by an Italian lesson, raked by the fire of eyes from the office window, she at once recognized the cause of that fury. And now Madame Bontemps' violent words over the balustrade had made all patent and clear to everybody in the place. This was much worse than roulette. She could never face any of them again.

She would fly to the paternal arms of the great Cook, and take counsel and tickets of him for the home journey to-morrow. She would give out to her friends that the climate was killing her--she was being slowly but surely poisoned by hotel food--devoured by mosquitoes--reduced to the verge of insanity by sleepless and ever-croaking frogs--go home and pour all her follies, mischances and miseries into the ever-sympathetic, ever-comforting bosom of her mother--but not of her father. No; he must be put off with mosquitoes, frogs, poisonous food and murderous climates. And, above all, Arthur must never, never be made acquainted with the melancholy nature of her recent experiences. To be sure, there was one comfort, unless some officious creature told him, he would never want to know the nature of those recent sorrows; his interest in her affairs was far too slight. Oh yes, that was a very great comfort indeed, she reflected, with a great choke that testified to her joy, and obliged momentary recourse to a pocket-handkerchief that suddenly became wet through.

The thin man had called himself a fool seven times in sight of his looking-glass the night before; but Ermengarde must have applied the name to herself seventy times seven that afternoon, when, after tucking Dorris up in eider-downs, comforting her with eau-de-Cologne, and leaving her to slumber and the digestion of good counsel, she fled blindly out to the mountain-path, whither she neither knew nor cared. But as you had--owing to the narrowness of the ridge behind the hotel--only two possible ways to go, one up and one down, she instinctively took the upper, as leading farther from the haunts of mankind, which had in the mass suddenly become distasteful and abhorrent to her.

Yes; she saw it all now--the Carnival incidents, the scene at dawn on the brink of the ravine, the Malmaison episode, M. Isidore's impassioned declaration during the Italian lesson watched by Geneviève, and avenged upon herself by instant sentence of expulsion from the little mountain paradise. Everybody had fooled her--she herself most of all. Fool, not seven times, nor seventy, but seventy times seven! Even the woman of mystery, for all the darkness of her suppositions cloud of strange, unknown sins, had tried to warn her from her folly. The bitterness of being warned, and vainly warned, by such as she! To be patronized, protected, and advised, to owe anything to the good-nature, the compassion even of an unfortunate young person, whose undesirable companionship would never have been tolerated, except for the pity she inspired and the capacity for better things she occasionally showed. Red horror flushed her cheeks at the thought of what inferences M. Isidore might have drawn from her tacit acceptance of his supposed homage. The little traitor, the coxcomb! No; never again--from a Frenchman. What heavenly comfort in the thought that Arthur would never know the true history of those few weeks--at least, not unless he turned quite nice and sympathetic, when both were grey and old, and preparing to end their days. Then it might be safe to tell him, not before.

An Italian afternoon sun smote upon the rock-hewn path with lances of fire; shadow there was none; the way was steep; her wild flight had carried her hardly farther than the end of the hotel precincts to the sudden, bold little eminence topped by pine-trees, round which the path wound. Here a jutting rock, half buried in undergrowth of juniper, rosemary, and such-like, offered a broad seat, sheltered from view by the turn of the pine-topped steep to those mounting the ridge, but fully exposed to the broad sun-blaze beating on the mule-path; and here she subsided, looking across the shadowy blue of the ravine through wet eyes, and propping herself by clutching at the lichen-embroidered edge of the rock, a prey to these mournful reflections, when something stirred under the feathery bunch of pines overhead, some pebbles and earth came rattling down, there was a light thud on the path beside her, and there, with melancholy eyes and a face expressive of the utmost concern, stood M. Isidore, handsome as ever. She looked up with a little cry, and dashed the tears from her face; but, before English lips could frame a syllable, an overwhelming torrent of eloquent French apology broke forth from the gallant Gaul, sweeping everything before it in its rushing course.

That he should have been the innocent and unwitting cause of insult and inconvenience to Madame broke his heart and drove him to distraction, she heard. He was ready to do anything in expiation and amendment; if, indeed, any were possible; she might command him; he was there, at her service absolutely. Did she wish apartments, pension, anything, elsewhere? He would fly to the ends of the earth to secure them; he would telegraph north, south, east, and west; let her but name her locality, her terms, and her aspect, they should be hers. She could, of course, not remain an hour under that roof after such an insult. What broke his heart most severely and drove him to uttermost distraction and maddest desire to slay himself, was the thought of Madame's invariable and continuous kindness to himself. At this a deepening crimson obliged Madame to spread a damp and flimsy wisp of handkerchief over as much of her face as circumstances permitted, attempting some faint murmurs of deprecation; she had only been decently civil, as to others. How he should have fared in the agonizing vicissitudes by which his bosom had been so cruelly furrowed and torn, without the unvarying sympathy and counsel Madame was good enough to extend to him, M. Isidore shuddered to think. Enough; she had saved him, she had recalled him to manhood and enabled him to endure, even to hope. In return for this she had suffered outrage, insult, desecration, from a breast of granite, from the impure rage of a hyena heart. She had been involved in the persecutions and maledictions of a ferocious fate that had blasted and blighted him from earliest youth--he looked about eighteen as he spoke--the poison of his misery had infected her. He wondered why he had been born, and rejoiced that it was not impossible for a brave man to die. In the meantime, and before resorting to this ultimate course of action, he had a favour to ask, an enormous favour, that nothing but previous experience of the inexhaustible goodness, the boundless tenderness, of Madame emboldened him to implore. She was aware of the misconstructions that a viperous and impure nature had cast upon the kindness and good counsel, he might almost say, despite her youth, the maternal counsel of Madame. He was powerless to explain these misconstructions, or remove the venomous suspicions with which a guileless and loving ear had been systematically and fatally poisoned. Madame alone had power to do this. Five words face to face with Mlle. Bontemps alone could effect it. Mademoiselle, prejudiced, poisoned against him, shuddering under base imputations to him of a terrible perfidy, reluctantly persuaded by venomous tongues, by the hissings of human serpents, of basest betrayal on the part of one she trusted to the utmost, wounded, as she imagined, by the hand she loved most, transfixed to the heart's core, bleeding from the stab of a supposed treachery without parallel, and almost lifeless, Mademoiselle absolutely refused to admit him to her adored presence, whence he was pitilessly chased by the entire Bontemps family. Madame was acquainted with the history of his devouring passion for this young girl, to win whose love he had stooped to serve, as Jupiter and other gods in like cases had so frequently done, assuming the form of a river, a bull, a shower of gold--what you will. The tenderness of Mademoiselle had been kindled by the amazing fire of his devotion, the marble prejudices even of her stony-hearted parents had been shattered after her rescue from the violence of a---- in short, after her rescue had been effected at the Carnival in the disguise of a crocodile; and, as Madame was doubtless aware, he had, in consequence of that, been permitted to salute Mlle. Geneviève as his betrothed. Of venomous and absurd misconceptions, partly due in all cases to his own folly and indiscretion, Madame was but too well aware. Would she have the extreme complaisance to explain this both to Mlle. Bontemps and to her iron-breasted parents?

"M. Isidore, I will do what I can. But how can I?" she faltered, having fresh recourse to the sadly inefficient handkerchief, now more like a wet sponge. "But they won't believe me. And I am so sorry about the--the It-It-Italian lessons you were goo-good enough to give me, never dreaming----"

"_And_ the Monte Carlo incident," added M. Isidore, who was eminently practical. "Ah, Madame!" he cried, sinking with infinite grace and dexterity on one knee on a comparatively soft piece of rock, "you are acquainted with the depth of my passion, my infatuation, the agony, with which my bosom is torn. Grant me this one favour--only this one. I know that I am asking much--but consider my passion--have pity on my despair----"

"Stop that," suddenly growled a bass voice in British accents, as the tall figure and picturesque untidiness of the Anarchist appeared from round the corner of the pine-topped bluff, to the stupefaction of M. Isidore, who sprang to his feet with a deep involuntary "Mon Dieu!" and of Ermengarde, who removed the wet wisp from her face with a little stifled shriek, and gazed horror-struck on the intruder, who had the satisfaction of spoiling this moving scene of a weeping lady sadly resisting the passionate importunity of a kneeling, supplicating cavalier.

"Que diable voulez-vous ici, de Konski?" cried M. Isidore, quickly recovering himself, and fiercely and haughtily twirling his moustache.

"What the devil are you doing here, de Vieuxbois?" retorted the Anarchist in French. "What do you mean by masquerading as a waiter in a hotel? Stop annoying this lady at once."

"It is, on the contrary, Monsieur, you that annoy Madame. Have the complaisance to leave us without delay," commanded M. Isidore, his moustache stiff with rage.

"Oh, please go away," cried Ermengarde distractedly, shivering and white--"go at once, all of you--all of you!"

For herself the luckless Ermengarde had no option; she was totally incapable of flight, the path being narrow, and blocked on the one hand by M. Isidore and on the other by M. de Konski, while the bluff towered steeply above her and the ravine fell abruptly below. She wished the rock-path would split open and swallow her up, that the bluff would topple down and bury her under it, that she could get past the antagonists and fall headlong down the ravine, down to the very bed of the torrent below; in fact, she hardly knew what she wished in her desperation.

"Leave this lady, Vicomte," thundered the Anarchist. "Go, at once, before I make you!"

The little Frenchman turned, bowing respectfully to the trembling, almost weeping, Ermengarde. "Madame," he said mournfully, "I regret deeply. One moment, and you are disembarrassed from the unwarrantable intrusion of this person. Go you, M. de Konski," he added, facing about with gestures of command, "before I hurl you to the depths below. Is it probable that I permit a stranger to molest with his undesired presence a lady who honours me with her acquaintance and commands my protection?"

"No more of that, de Vieuxbois," came the stern retort. "You have annoyed this lady more than enough. Off with you."

"And pray, M. de Konski," demanded M. Isidore, with flaming glance and fierce accent, "what is Madame to you, that you thus arrogantly dare to essay to chase people from her presence?"

"Oh, not much," the Anarchist replied bitterly--"not much. Only--only a--connexion--by marriage."

At this moment a wild cry from the distressed lady, followed by the sudden and precipitate descent of the Anarchist's beard down the ravine, a similar flight of his broad felt hat and goggles in the same direction, sequent on the uprising from her rocky seat of Ermengarde, who, indeed, had initiated the movements of these things, with the terrified exclamation of "Arthur!" struck M. Isidore dumb with amazement for about the space of seven seconds, at the end of which he observed with a gentle smile, "Pardon, Monsieur, I was mistaken; I had not understood. The connexion appears to be somewhat intimate. I congratulate," and airily raising his hat, he slipped lightly up the path to where it was possible to scale the cliff, up which he sprang, vanishing in the clump of pines on the top.