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My Friend

DOROTHEA THORNTON CLARKE, F.R.G.S.

WITHOUT WHOSE HELP AND CONSTANT ENCOURAGEMENT

NEITHER THIS NOR ANY OF MY BOOKS

WOULD HAVE BEEN WRITTEN

The castle of Rochefallain stood high above the world. Alone and aloof it towered, with only wooded hills and grey crags for company. In varying seasons the scene was gilded with mimosa, sprayed with the pale pink of almond blossom, or blushed with the rosy glow of peach trees in full bloom. And in the autumn chestnut forests blazed with a wealth of red and gold, setting the landscape on fire.

The castle was an ancient pile with slit windows, battlements and square towers. Pine and cork forests marched up out of the deep valleys towards it. Rather abruptly the trees stopped and gave place to great boulders and outstanding ribs of rock, in every nook and corner of which grew wild lavender, cistus, rosemary and heather.

The Laurients of Rochefallain were one of the oldest families in France. They dated back to the time of the Saracens. The mountain range where their estate lay was called after these dark invaders—Chaine des Maures—and the site of their castle had once been a Moorish stronghold. A tinge of this wild blood still lingered in their veins, making them known among their kind as the “volcanic Laurients.” Greek and Roman, too, had set their stamp upon this ancient family. Romantic names from those far off days still remained, and occasionally a member cropped up who united in his person the various traits of these several nations.

Such a one was Paul Andreani Marius Casimir Laurient, the Marquis of Rochefallain’s youngest son. He had the well-cut features and splendid proportions of the long dead Greek Andreani; he was proud as Marius, a conqueror from Ancient Rome; he had the swarthy skin of Casimir the Saracen invader, and a tinge of that passionate Eastern blood lingered in him.

Paul Laurient spent his days between the old castle and Cannes, some fifty miles away, where his father had a magnificent villa.

One of the rich merchants in that town, a man of the name of Jules Morelli, had once offered to buy all the surplus crops from the Rochefallain estate, and for this suggestion had gained the hatred of the little boy.

Had the marquis been dependent upon his estate for his income he would have been a very poor man. His money came from other sources. Those of his crops that he did not need were placed at the disposal of his tenants; and he would have let his surplus produce rot on the trees rather than condescend to dabble in trade.

Always after this ill-timed suggestion, if Paul happened to meet any member of the Morelli family he scowled at them ferociously. This habit of his brought him many a shake and cuff should his father or tutor or elder brothers chance to catch him in the act; and frequently he was banished from Cannes to the old castle because of his conduct. But no amount of punishment would stop his unseemly behavior.

It was an acknowledged fact in the family that whenever Paul got an idea into his head nothing outsiders could say or do would make him alter it. His mind was sometimes changed, but only when of his own accord he realized he had been wrong.

“The fixed idea” his brothers called it. And frequently the marquis said to his youngest son:

“Some day, my boy, this pig-headedness of yours will get you into serious trouble.”

France, his beloved France, was at war with one of her hereditary foes. And England, brave England, had come to the rescue. In the little boy’s eyes every English person wore a halo; each one came of a nation of heroes and saviours.

As the weary years dragged on, Paul had other things to think of than this new hero worship.

The war caught up and killed first one and then the other of his elder brothers. Just before the armistice it claimed his father as a victim. At fourteen years of age Paul was Marquis of Rochefallain and an orphan, for his mother had died when he was a few months old.

When his affairs were settled it seemed to the boy that his inheritance was slipping away from him—place, power and position.

His guardians tried to explain matters like depreciation of stock, falling rate of exchange, the Russian collapse, accumulated debts and mortgages. But at first all Paul grasped was the fact that the beautiful villa in Cannes was going to be bought by the hated Morellis, who had also made a bid for anything of value in his castle. The old place was to be shut up. He was to live with one of his own peasant farmers, who would teach him agriculture, so that he could learn to make his estate profitable. And when he reached a marriageable age he would have to pick a bride with money—such a one as little Yvonne Morelli would be—to build up his ruined fortune.

To the boy-marquis, of all the many humiliations that faced him the last was the greatest; for he realized that his guardians had their eye on Yvonne Morelli as a suitable match for him.

That he should be expected to marry a parvenue and live on her money was the bitterest pill of all to the haughty youngster. Paul now hated the Morellis more than ever. They had prospered and flourished and become millionaires during the war, battening on the blood of brave men.

However, five years passed before his relations were called upon to deal with what his brothers used to call the “fixed idea.”

When Paul Laurient was nineteen his guardians decided he must marry. He was the last of his name. If anything happened to him the family died out. Therefore he must produce an heir as quickly as possible. A conclave was called, and four middle-aged aristocrats arranged his future between them.

In France young men are not of age until their twenty-fifth year. Paul was utterly at the mercy of his guardians, and, until he attained his majority, dependent on them for every penny.

Already Jules Morelli had approached Paul’s guardians, prepared to give an enormous “dot” provided his one daughter became the Marquise de Rochefallain. Everything was arranged to the satisfaction of the elders. There remained only to bring the horse to the water and make him drink.

On the boy’s nineteenth birthday a luncheon party was given at an hotel in Cannes. Among the guests invited were Monsieur and Madame Morelli and their son and daughter.

With Paul Laurient money was always scarce and new clothes few and far between. He went to the luncheon party in a lounge suit of black serge with a white pin stripe, and a cloth beret, like a tight tam o’ shanter, on his shapely head. The suit was a trifle too big; it was new and had to allow for his growth.

He belonged to that younger generation of Latins frequently met with now in France; thoughtful, serious young men, each in himself an embryo reformer, each hopeful of leaving the world a better place than he found it. But owing to the straits into which he had been plunged he was strangely ignorant of the world and its ways.

Paul was now a tall, handsome youngster, with broad shoulders and slender hips. He had wide brown eyes as soft as velvet, and a mop of rich brown hair. Normally his expression was haughty, but, occasionally, his proud, well-cut mouth relaxed into a grave, shy smile of rare fascination.

To Yvonne he was the most wonderful being she had ever seen, so slim and haughty and handsome, this boy her father’s millions would buy. And she wanted him more than she had ever wanted anything in her short, pampered life.

Yvonne, a plump, dark girl, a year Paul’s senior, had hard little eyes like burnt currants, and a petulant expression.

No word of the arranged match had been breathed to Paul, nor was it mentioned during the meal. Louis Morelli, Yvonne’s brother, a young man of about thirty, sat opposite the marquis, and did his best to be friendly by talking on topics which he thought would interest his future brother-in-law.

He talked of England and motoring. Then Paul hated him equally with Yvonne. These upstart Morellis had everything he wanted and could not have.

Louis Morelli had been educated in England, a country Paul cheerfully would have given ten years of his life to visit; and Louis also owned a big racing car, a possession for which the youngster would have bartered another ten years.

When the luncheon was over and the guests departing Madame Morelli put out the first feeler.

“I’m having a dance at my villa next week, Marquis,” she said. “An informal little affair just for young people. I should be so delighted if you would come.”

That he should be invited by this moneyed parvenue to a house that once belonged to his family was gall and wormwood to the impoverished youngster.

“I can’t spare another day so soon,” Paul replied. “The crops have to be considered. I’m really no better than a peasant farmer now.”

“You should have accepted Madame Morelli’s invitation,” one of his aunts purred. “You’re old enough to go out and about now.”

For the last five years Paul’s life had been most lonely. He seldom had time to stir far from his secluded estate, and never any money for recreation. Until now his guardians had not troubled much about him.

He looked at their worldly, self-seeking, self-indulgent faces and then he had his say.

“I know you are arranging for me to marry that Morelli girl. Well, I won’t marry her, and nothing that you can say or do will ever make me.”

There was a great hubbub and commotion, and much talk of the money that was needed and the heir that was necessary.

“Give the young fool a week to think about it in,” his maternal uncle said at length. “And if he hasn’t come to his senses then, I’ll soon find a way of making him.”

Count de Naudin puffed out his cheeks and stamped up and down the room, a way he had when he was angry.

He was even more angry at the end of the week when he found Paul still obdurate.

He pointed out to the boy the wealth he would have to play with, the mistresses and motor cars it would buy him. His fine mouth curving into a sneer Paul listened, but he said nothing.

“What on earth is the matter with Yvonne? She’s not bad looking, she’s young, she’s rich,” finally his uncle thundered in a state of exasperation.

“Indeed!” he sneered. “And pray what type do you fancy? At the same time it’s just as well to remember that beggars can’t be choosers.”

Paul himself could not have said what type he wanted. He was haunted by a nebulous dream of gold—quite a different sort of gold from that of his uncle’s—of golden hair and golden qualities beneath a fair exterior. But no girl he had ever seen fitted in with his golden ghost, Rêve d’Or, he had christened her.

“You young fool,” the count continued, “don’t you realize that Yvonne’s ‘dot’ alone is twenty million francs, and that she will have three times that amount when her father dies, and that she’s prepared to dote on you.”

His guardians called another meeting. Several damsels with large fortunes were produced for the boy’s inspection, but he had faults to find with them all.

As the youngster could not be reasoned into matrimony his guardians next tried bribes.

“Perhaps we are rushing you a bit,” his uncle said on next seeing his nephew. “We’re anxious to see you suitably settled, and you naturally want to see something of life before you marry. What about having a year in Paris with me, and a hundred thousands francs to spend?”

It was a large sum for his guardians to get together, but with an effort it could be done. Moreover, Morelli had increased his daughter’s “dot”—Yvonne having set her heart on the young marquis.

Paul knew the sort of life he would be expected to lead in Paris. He wanted to see the world, but not under the conditions offered.

“Thanks, but I’m not specially keen on vice,” was the unappreciative answer.

On his estate Paul had been nicknamed “St. Anthony”, because he ignored all women and did not succumb to the attractions of pretty peasant girls, anxious for him to exercise his “droit du seigneur.”

“You pig-headed young fool, you’ll marry Yvonne Morelli if I have to starve you into it.”

All Paul’s guardians were in great straits. He was their one asset, this handsome boy, and they intended to sell him to the highest bidder. If, owing to their efforts and persuasions, Yvonne Morelli became the Marquise de Rochefallain, her father would be a bank they could draw on continually.

From that interview Paul Laurient went back to his duties wondering what the next move would be.

Had his guardians dared, they would have locked the rebel up in his bedroom, and kept him there until he came to his senses.

Over Paul’s head his cork and chestnut forests were let to a merchant in Toulon, who also took over the extensive olive groves and vineyards belonging to the estate. The rents of the scattered farms and cottages he was now not allowed to handle. They were paid direct to an agent appointed by his guardians. The keys of his cherished castle were taken from him so that he should not find a refuge there. Knowing he was liked by his tenants, they were forbidden to help him under threats of being turned out of their homes.

But he was to find that a pair of willing hands were not going to be of much use.

As agriculture was the only trade he knew, he tried to get work on the farms around. Although his capabilities were known, he found all openings were closed to him. For a moment his mind dwelt on emigration. But to emigrate one must have a certain amount of money, and Paul had not fifty francs he could call his own. He tried to go as a soldier, but he had been exempt, and now influence barred his way. Next he contemplated office work, but he had had no clerical training and knew he would be of no use in any such post. Tramping to the nearest town he managed to get as conductor on an electric car, but he was soon ousted out of that. Next he went as a railway porter, but within a week was dismissed.

Then Paul knew he was outlawed, that the Morelli money and his guardians’ influence had combined to keep him from getting a living for himself.

For a brief bewildered space it seemed to the boy that he would have to succumb to the forces ranged against him.

Then an unexpected ally came forward in the shape of his foster-mother—Mère Puget.

It was a tiny two-roomed place with about a couple of acres of ground, left to her for life, together with a small annuity, by Paul’s father. Mère Puget did not want the cottage as she was keeping house for her unmarried sons, so she offered it to the rebel. He knew the Puget brothers would not suffer for their mother’s generosity. A few months before, in his presence, they had signed a lease for their farm, that would last until he attained his majority.

Hating Paul’s guardians because of their persecution of the boy who had been her charge for the first four years of his life, bribery would not turn Mère Puget from her decision.

Paul took possession of her cottage, to live as best he could on what the land provided. It was a move his persecutors had not reckoned on, and it left them in an impasse. They consoled themselves by saying he would soon tire of a life of constant toil and semi-destitution.

Three years later, half-starved and in rags, Paul still flew the flag of independence.

Sir Gerald Fane, of Fanesdene, was a Yorkshire squire of the best type. His family tree went back to the time of Queen Elizabeth. Throughout the centuries they had been noted for their integrity, justice, and generosity.

In their history the Fanes possessed one peculiarity. They were distinctly a masculine race. Only about once in every three generations did a girl child appear.

Six years lay between Hilary Fane and the youngest of her four brothers. When she came Sir Gerald could hardly contain himself for joy. He was getting on in life, nearly sixty, and had always craved for a daughter.

Until her tenth year there was only one fly in Hilary’s ointment—her sex. Not that it was allowed to obtrude itself very much. She insisted on doing all her brothers did, and in wearing a replica of their clothes. Only at night did she ever blossom out into a girl; a slim, pretty little girl with golden hair and great luminous hazel eyes that were pools of molten gold. She had a fresh, boyish face, slender, tapering limbs, and wrists and ankles so frail that it seemed a touch would break them.

Hilary, the golden, her brothers called her, not only on account of her coloring, but because of her sterling qualities.

At night when she came down to dessert, clothed and in her right sex, she would sit on Sir Gerald’s knee—a place she never deigned to occupy when wearing male attire. When the time for saying good-night came, she would rub her soft, delicate cheek against his rough red one.

“Oh, Daddy, why wasn’t I really a boy like all the rest of them?” she would often whisper.

She held her father solely responsible for her sex, having so often heard of his craving for a girl child.

“Why, Hilary, my golden lassie,” he would answer, “I’d rather have you than all my lads put together.”

But a day came when Sir Gerald Fane echoed his daughter’s wish to the fullest.

The war claimed two of his sons, and when Hilary was fourteen her surviving brothers were drowned when out boating.

After the death of his sons the old man had but one idea—to save money for Hilary. The Fane estates were entailed, the heir a married cousin in New Zealand.

Already he had put aside a nice nest-egg for his daughter. Now he cut down every possible expense. Within the space of a few days he turned from a generous man to a miser.

In Hilary the sense of heritage was highly developed. The fact that she might be comparatively poor did not trouble her, but the knowledge that one day she would have to leave her home left her heartbroken.

When she was seventeen her father died, leaving her over ten thousand a year. Lady Fane was already provided for, and her death would mean nearly another ten thousand a year to the girl.

To the end of her life Hilary felt she would remember leaving Fanesdene. It was as if her heart were being slowly wrenched out of her body. As the day for departure drew near, she spent her time in wandering through the old manor and the park. She went on long rides over the sweeping moors, through woods, meadows, farms and villages. All of which would have been hers to cherish and care for if only she had been a boy. It seemed that never again would she find a home on this earth. She was Ishmael, an outcast, without place or people.

Hilary and her mother settled in a small country village within easy distance of London. The girl tried to interest herself in what went on in the place. But the land was not her land, nor the people her people, and she felt an alien, an intruder.

She next set out on a career of sightseeing and pleasure-hunting, in a whirl of excitement trying to numb the pain in her heart; a constant gnawing pain that drove her hither and thither in an effort to find a spot where she could feel at home.

Knowing what was the cause of it Lady Fane said very little on the subject. But when Hilary’s twenty-first birthday came and she was still possessed of a demon of restlessness that now drove her to night-clubs, and bizarre parties, in company with a doubtful set of wild young people, her mother decided to say a few words on the matter.

Nowadays she seldom saw her daughter. But Hilary had written to say she would be spending her birthday week-end at home.

The first evening, when they were in the drawing-room together, Lady Fane studied her child closely.

Hilary was now a tall, slim girl with a smooth, cropped, golden head. She wore a straight, short, sleeveless frock of gold tissue, and little gilt shoes. Long amber earrings dangled from her small ears, and a long amber cigarette holder was between her slim, ringless fingers.

She was leaning against the chimney-piece smoking cigarette after cigarette as she chatted in a clear, low, boyish voice about places and people, pausing every now and again for a sip of whiskey and soda from a glass on a table near.

The mother knew her daughter was deteriorating through having lost all that had interested her in life, and as yet having found nothing to take its place. In her heart was a silent prayer that her child would not have strayed too far along the hectic path of pleasure before something happened to bring her back to her old ways and standards.

At heart the child was too good, too refined for the life she was leading; a wild, aimless existence, an undignified scramble after pleasure that got her into ill-repute everywhere.

“Hilary, why don’t you marry and start a family of your own?” she asked presently.

The girl glanced at her mother, with wide hazel eyes that had a lost, restless look in their luminous depths.

“It’s better to err for a single night than make a mistake which may last you a lifetime,” Hilary said, quoting a current “mot” of her set.

This comment made her mother voice the fear that was in her heart—that the wild set her daughter now moved in might swamp the girl entirely.

“I hope darling you won’t be too . . . too modern. I know I’m hopelessly out of date and all that. But it would break my heart if you . . . you——”

“What a lot of bogeys you do keep in your mind, Mumsie,” she said in a soothing tone. “You know I hate cheapness.”

“There’s not one ever likely to occupy that position. If ever I marry I want as good as I give.”

“With your income, Hilary, you can afford to waive money. So long as you pick a really nice boy that’s all that matters.”

Hilary finished her cigarette. From a box on the table she helped herself to another, slowly and thoughtfully fixing it into the long amber holder.

“Oh, Mother,” she said all at once, a note of pain in her voice, “why did Daddy ‘wish’ me into being a girl?”

“I know. It’s stupid of me to be always grousing. But it does seem so unfair.”

They were back on the old subject of heritage. Lady Fane could find nothing to say that had not been said a hundred times before, so she remained silent.

With a hopeless gesture Hilary turned towards the table and poured out another whiskey and soda.

“The Selbys are going to the South of France next week. To Cannes,” she volunteered as she did this.

“Jack has friends out there, some people called Morelli, with pots of money. War profiteers I fancy. He used to be at school with the son.”

The Selbys, mother, grown-up son and daughter, were some of the most objectionable of Hilary’s new friends.

“Oh, Mother, I am a trial, aren’t I? Gadding here and there with impossible people. But I can’t bear to meet anyone who reminds me of the old days. I must go with a generation that knoweth not Fanesdene. It makes me feel like crying if anyone mentions it even.”

Lady Fane said nothing. She could only draw the sleek head on her shoulder and hold it there.

Her golden girl, so fair and beautiful, and once so high-minded and honorable, in the old days sweet with the scent of fresh flowers and the breath of wide clean moors. Now she was getting smirched with the wild ways of the set she moved in, reeking with whiskey and cigarette smoke.

Somewhere there must be someone who could bring this lost child back to her former self.

Outside an antique shop in one of the principal streets in Cannes a motor stood, a slim, silver two-seater. The sight of it standing empty made a man who was driving a big racing car decrease his pace quickly and come to a halt behind it.

Without any explanation Louis Morelli deserted his sister and made towards the empty car, taking up his stand there.

“Why are you waiting there?” she asked in a petulant manner. “We were due at the Selbys at three and it’s now nearly half-past.”

“Is it an assignation?” she asked, curiosity getting the better of annoyance.

“Who are you expecting to see?” she asked, peering into the dark depths of the antique shop.

“The Selbys’ friend? I haven’t met her yet. She was out when Mother and I called. Is she pretty?”

“You have a new love every week,” she said. “You’re not like me. Sometimes I cry all night for Paul.”

“I shall never forget him. I shall hope and hope and hope until he marries. And then I shall go into a convent.”

“Nothing of the sort. He’s the first thing you’ve wanted that you haven’t been able to get. That’s all.”

“You laugh at my broken heart. But if this Miss Fane doesn’t return your passion you’ll have more sympathy with me.”

“It’s rather early in the day to talk about that. I’ve only seen her once.”

At that moment, a slim, white-clad figure appeared in the doorway, lingering there for a moment to talk to someone inside: a figure in riding breeches, brown boots and leggings, with sexless coat and shirt and bare head of gleaming gold.

“Miss Fane!” Yvonne exclaimed, peering at Hilary. “Why, I thought it was a boy.”

“A boy by day and a girl by night, a delicious combination. I’m tired of women who do nothing but impress their sex on you. I want you to get Miss Fane to come to our place. She’s a real aristocrat. Belongs to one of the oldest families in England. With a fortune of her own into the bargain.”

“I met her when I took Miss Selby back yesterday. She overtook us in that silver car. And Jack asked me to stay on for dinner and told me all about her.”

Hilary glanced at the French girl, thinking what an underbred, overdressed, bad-tempered creature she looked.

“So you’re interested in antiques,” he said. “We have a taste in common.”

“It’s my mother’s birthday in a few weeks’ time. And I want a really nice ring for her, of the Louis Quinze period, with a big square emerald. I’ve been into a half-dozen shops but I can’t even hear of one. Not a really good one.”

“Really good ones are difficult to get nowadays,” Yvonne put in. “Louis has a collection. You must come in for dinner one evening, Miss Fane, and see them.”

“I should love to. But you must keep an eye on me or I shall be stealing the best one for my mother.”

“I may be able to get one for you without you being reduced to such extremes,” Morelli remarked. “Tell me exactly what you want.”

Hilary described the kind of ring she wanted and mentioned the price she was prepared to pay.

“We’re playing tennis with the Selbys this afternoon,” Louis said as he opened the door for her. “May I book a set with you now?”

Hilary rather liked Louis Morelli. Fat and common she knew he was, but he was also shrewd and clever; not a fatuous nonentity with no idea in his head except pleasure, like most of Jack Selby’s friends.

“I’m not playing tennis to-day,” she answered. “If you knew me better my clothes would tell you I was going exploring in my car.”

“I don’t want anyone with me,” she said in a laughing manner, “because I’m going in pursuit of my own secret sin.”

To avoid conversation that might lead to flowery compliments Hilary started her car.

Urged by the restlessness that always obsessed her, motoring had become her favorite pastime.

For her first drive she had set out for a part of the country the name of which had pleased her—Chaine des Maures—the unfrequented expanse of highland which stretches along the Mediterranean from St. Raphael to Hyères and runs inland for some thirty miles.

She had turned off the main road and had plunged into a wild country of high hills and deep valleys, grey rocks and dark green forests. There were olive groves and peach orchards, and queer patches that looked bare on first sight, but which proved to be the boles and branches of chestnut forests as yet untinged with green. On every side mimosa flowered; and rosemary and heather grew in bushes twelve feet high. The hedgerows were of cacti and aloes, and the red berries of the butcher’s broom sprinkled the undergrowth with drops of living blood. At times the scene was tropical; little sheltered patches where bamboo, orange, lemon and palm trees grew.

She had gone up and along narrow, empty, twisted roads, sweet with the breath of wild lavender and rock roses, seldom seeing a house and never a person.

Occasionally she had plunged into pine and cork forests. Sometimes there was terrace upon terrace of red earth where vines grew, as yet unsprouted, like distorted hands poking through the soil. Once or twice there was a wide, open space, a field as green as an English one.

Every growth was scented. The wind sighing through the hills, soft and aromatic. Hilary had thought the Garden of Eden could not have been sweeter. And the scented, soothing air of the lonely mountains had brought her a feeling of peace she had not known for years.

Turning a sharp corner, suddenly she had come upon an ancient castle perched on a spur across a deep valley. The old place had looked so lonely and deserted, keeping its solitary vigil on the hill, that she had felt she must explore it.

Stopping her car, she had vaulted a low wall near and made her way through a spreading grove of mimosa to a spot where she could get a better view, hoping to find a path that led down the valley and up to the old pile.

Seeing no way, she had lingered looking at the old place, in her interest forgetting the cigarette which usually found its way to her lips when she had a moment to spare.

All the way back to Cannes the castle had haunted her. She tried not to think about it, yet, now, it was drawing her back to itself again.

On reaching the mimosa grove, Hilary stopped her car. Lightly and easily she vaulted the low wall, and looking neither to the right nor the left, made straight to her point of view.

The grove stopped abruptly in a straight, rocky edge like a deep terrace. Similar terraces growing vines, almonds and peaches dropped down into the deep valley.

In the shadow of the scented trees that dripped their flowers in showers of golden rain, a young man was stretched. He had a shock of rich brown hair and a swarthy skin. His attire consisted of patched and faded coarse blue cotton trousers and shirt, the latter open at the neck and rolled up above the elbows, showing great muscles under a skin fine and smooth as brown satin. There was a broad leather belt with a pruning knife in it about his slender middle, and his bare feet were thrust into worn canvas shoes.

Hilary noticed he was watching her with interest out of large brown eyes where a touch of contempt lurked.

For the first time she had a vision of her sons; tall, swarthy boys, proud-lipped and velvet-eyed; and the sight filled her with a shyness she had never experienced before.

Paul Laurient did not realize that his unexpected visitor was a woman. He looked at Hilary thinking what an effeminate little dandy the trespasser was.

Then angry with herself for being put into a state of confusion because a handsome young farm laborer happened to look at her, she turned sharply and went back to her car.

Paul Laurient was not one who took favors easily. When he accepted his foster-mother’s offer of her cottage, he determined to pay rent for it. What was more he wanted to do all he could to make up for the bribes she had refused.

One way and another he would be able to grow enough to keep body and soul together. But with the forces ranged against him, to get actual money would be difficult.

He had solved the problem by keeping fowls and bees. To obtain his stock he had had to sell his watch, and his one ally gladly agreed to dispose of the eggs, poultry and honey.

Mère Puget lived in a tiny hamlet some five miles away. Twice a week Paul went there on a ramshackle bicycle, taking his produce in a carrier. This was the only bit of social life that came his way, beyond occasional and heated visits from his uncle.

One day when at his foster-mother’s he noticed an anxious expression on her usually placid face.

Mère Puget was a large, stout woman attired in a voluminous black dress, an ample blue apron, with generally a big, round, floppy, black hat on her head. She had had a half-dozen children, but her favorite was Rosa, her only daughter, two hours Paul’s junior.

Paul had no delusions about his pretty foster-sister. He had a good idea what had “got” Rosa—a fancy for some new man.

Le Taureau was the nickname for the local ne’er do well, a young farmer of about twenty-eight, big and strong and savage and evil as the “the Bull” he was called, who, with wild living, was running rapidly through the money left him by his father.

“If Rosa is flirting with him there’s no telling where it may end,” Mère Puget finished anxiously.

“In the meadow. Talk to her, mon petit. She won’t listen to me, but she may to you.”

The last thing Paul wanted to do was to lecture his foster-sister; but he took the responsibilities of his position seriously.

It was late afternoon. The sun was dropping golden behind the grey rocks and wooded heights, filling the scene with a gilded shimmer. Paul, who loved every inch of his estate, paused for a moment, his eyes on the crags and trees that were his; spots full of beauty, profitless as most of his domain.

In the midst of the meadow a girl was staking out goats; a pretty girl with a lively brown face, great sparkling black eyes and fluffy dark hair.

“What would you have me have in my head at twenty-two? I’m real flesh and blood. I’m not like you, something carved out of a rock.”

The two had shared the same mother, the same cradle, the same interests until they were four years old. The early bond still lingered and made Rosa a privileged person where the young seigneur was concerned.

“You mustn’t play with Le Taureau, Rosa. He’s not a man, he’s a beast. He drinks. He gambles. He goes with bad women. He——”

“He’s taking me to the Café des Maures to-morrow,” she interrupted. “Shall you be there?”

“You’re not in love, you’re only playing. Playing with someone who may hurt you if you’re not careful.”

“How do you know whether I’m in love or not, St. Anthony? You’ve had no experience.”

“I know Le Taureau. And he’s not the sort of man for a nice little girl like you to go with. So stop flirting with him just to please me.”

“I shall go to-morrow. But I won’t flirt with him. I shall flirt with you instead.”

Paul said nothing. He had his own ideas about certain things and tried to live up to them, keeping in abeyance that streak of Casimir that lingered in him.

Among the many men of Hilary’s acquaintance there was not one whose image haunted her. Yet when she got back from her second visit to the castle she found herself thinking more about the boy she had seen under the mimosas than the old pile itself.

The next afternoon she was back in the scented grove. She tried to make herself believe she was there to learn more about the chateau, and that the young man would be the best person to apply to.

On entering the grove she found it was empty. With a feeling of disappointment she was going back to her car when she noticed a little gate let into a dense hedge of rosemary.

Making in that direction she saw it led into a well-tended garden in which was a tiny cottage, hardly more than a hovel. A big gnarled cherry tree grew over it, flowering white against the blue. Olive, fig, orange and peach trees dotted the garden, and on one side were rows of beehives.

In a corner was a large, square, cement reservoir, of the kind used in the district for collecting rain water for irrigation. On the wide edge, evidently washed and put there to dry, was a pair of faded blue cotton trousers.

Several of the patches on them the girl recognized, and she knew she had tracked her quarry to his lair.

Again she was disappointed. The cottage door was locked and there was no sign of anyone about.

A tiny place with two low rooms, a door of rough planks in the middle, a window on either side looking on to wide beds of violets. In front was the cherry tree, and, underneath, a home-made seat and table. From there was a wide view of the valley and castle and the terraces immediately beneath planted with vines.

Into each of the windows she peeped. The first room was a kitchen with rough, white-washed walls and a cement floor. It contained a chair, a table, a built-in corner cupboard, a brazier-like stove, a heap of pine cones and a few pieces of coarse yellow pottery. On the floor of the second room was a thick heap of straw on which was a neatly folded brown blanket, evidently the young man’s bed. Beyond this there was nothing except a large oak box, rather like a sailor’s chest, with “Paul Laurient” carved on it in big letters.

Hilary liked the name. It echoed and re-echoed in her head until she felt she would never forget it.

Seating herself under the cherry tree she waited, hoping the young man would come back.

As time passed and no one came she recollected it was Sunday. In all probability he was far away, keeping a tryst with some local beauty. In a flash she saw him married, some other woman the mother of those sons, and the sight hurt her.

Surprised at her own folly she got up, determined to concentrate on the castle and put the young man out of her mind.

After driving some little distance she saw an old woman washing clothes in the bed of a stream. Stopping her car she climbed down the bank and made her way over the boulders.

“Can you tell me what that old castle is called? Up in the hills there,” Hilary asked, pointing in the direction from which she had come.

With some surprise the old dame looked round. Not once a year did she see a foreigner.

In out-of-the-way parts Hilary’s garb often caused her to be addressed in the masculine gender. She was so used to it that it did not even make her smile. She could act the boy to perfection, having for the first fourteen years of her life tried to forget she was anything else.

Nowadays, she only wore male costume when she was abroad: in some parts of the Continent a woman driving a motor was still a novelty. Hilary liked going out by herself and doing a little mild exploring, but once or twice her real sex had created such a sensation that she had adopted boy’s clothes for her solitary expeditions.

“It has been empty for years. The present marquis is too poor to keep it up.”

Occasionally on her travels Hilary had met these impoverished aristocrats, shabby old men and women, living in top back rooms of hotels, and taken cheaply as decoys.

“The marquis is poor, but he’s not old. And if he’s poor it’s his own fault. There are plenty of rich young ladies anxious to marry him. But he has refused to marry for money. He is young and foolish, and talks of love, and his behavior, has made his guardians very angry.”

“I don’t agree, monsieur. Love so often goes. But money, if one is careful, stays and grows more. But young people have no sense in these matters.”

“I suppose there’s no chance of the old chateau being sold?” she asked, giving tongue to her secret desire.

“Sold! Mon dieu, no! The little marquis would starve and work himself to death rather than let the old place go. His people have been there for over eight hundred years.”

Hilary made a few inquiries about the route, then handing the old woman a five franc note, she returned to her car and started off in the direction of the café.

The Café des Maures stood on the outskirts of the straggling village of Volli. It was a small, unpretending place. On one side was a square of worn grass, dotted with chairs and tables. Lemon and orange trees and clumps of bamboo grew in the corners, and wistaria arched the entrance.

On Sundays the center of the large square was cleared, and a mechanical piano brought out. Those of the customers who wished to dance had only to insert their coins, and in a loud metallic manner the instrument clanged out several measures.

During the afternoon the machine made money, for the village was an out of the way one, and the young people seldom got into the towns.

Rosa Puget was among the few who really could dance, but her partners generally failed her. That afternoon she had had another disappointment.

Le Taureau had boasted of his prowess as a dancer, but a turn with him proved he was no better than the rest. Now, she sat at a table with him, sipping wine he had provided and telling him exactly what she thought of his performance.

“You’re just like an ox on its hind legs,” she was saying. “I shan’t dance with you again. I shall find another partner.”

He was a big man, over six feet, and very broad. He was dressed in black corduroy, loose coat and trousers, with a baggy white shirt embroidered with red. A red silk handkerchief was knotted round his thick neck. There was a cummerbund to match about his middle, and a wide peaked grey cap pulled sideways on to his head.

“If you do I shall smash him,” he threatened, “so that he won’t be able to dance with you a second time.”

“If you call it nonsense me being here with you, I can easily find someone else to sit with,” Rosa retorted.

There was one, however, she did not nod to. Instead, she favored him with an impish grimace.

She had not expected to see her foster-brother in the café. Since his rebellion he had avoided spots where his tenants congregated. And she knew he had come solely to keep an eye on her.

As Rosa sat there, her back on her official escort, she heard the purr of an approaching motor.

Her face alert with interest, she started to preen herself. Occasionally on a Sunday afternoon a car came up from one of the resorts on the coast, sometimes bringing smart young men who appreciated her looks and her dancing.

“Perhaps some young men from the town will be coming here this afternoon,” she remarked. “By watching them you may learn how to dance.”

“I’m no man’s monopoly. One week I go with one, the next with another. Your week is nearly up, mon ami.”

“I’m not your friend. I’m your lover. You don’t play with me as you’ve played with the others.”

“Don’t tease me too much, Rosa,” he whispered hoarsely, his face close to hers. “You know I’m mad for you.”

“Others have been mad for me. But I’m not mad for anyone. When I marry, I shall marry sanely, with my eyes wide open. And I shall marry a man like the seigneur, who neither drinks nor gambles nor goes with bad women.”

“It’s not necessary to get drunk or gamble or go with bad women to be manly,” Rosa said sharply, in defence of her foster-brother.

But Rosa’s attention had gone from him to the entrance of the garden where most eyes were turned.

A motor had stopped outside, a small silver two-seater. And out of it stepped what looked to be a slim, delicate lath of a lad in spotless white, bareheaded, and wearing brown boots and leggings and thick leather gloves to match.

Hilary had not expected to find the place full; usually these remote cafés were all but deserted.

With a boyish swagger she went forward, seating herself at a vacant table. She ordered coffee, benedictine and biscuits, and whilst these were coming drew out a cigarette. Then leaning back in her chair she studied the crowd.

Although Paul Laurient had his mop of hair hidden by a worn cloth beret, and had on a black and white suit a size or so too small for him, Hilary recognized him at once. And something within her rejoiced to see he was alone, and not with a girl as she had imagined.

The suit Paul wore was the one in which, three years before, he had gone to the luncheon party. Threadbare and shabby, it was now the only one he possessed, excepting the tattered workaday blue cotton.

Hilary knew he had recognized her, for he was watching her in the same interested, slightly contemptuous manner she had noticed in the mimosa grove.

In that poor little café the entrance of a well-dressed foreigner made all conversation momentarily die down. But once Hilary was seated it buzzed up again.

She loved the country folk of all nations. They were a class she understood and felt at home with. As she watched she became aware that one of the dancers was watching her intently, a pretty little fluffy-haired girl with great mischievous black eyes.

Rosa had no scruples about getting into conversation with any man she fancied, and she had a multitude of ruses at her finger tips.

When she next passed Hilary’s table, she put her hand to a long string of big red beads she was wearing. A sharp tug and the necklace was broken, some of the beads falling to the ground. As the chain slipped from her throat she made a feint of catching it: a feint that caused the string to fall almost at Hilary’s feet.

As it was near her, Hilary stooped and picked it up, at the same time retrieving several of the scattered beads. It was so strung that in case of accidents only a few beads could escape at a time.

“I think it’s all here,” Hilary said, holding the necklace towards its owner.

“Oh, what shall I do? It’s broken,” she cried, tears of distress filling her eyes.

During her travels Hilary had been in Venice. There she had learnt to mend a necklace so neatly that it would be difficult to find the join.

“Get me a needle and cotton, and I’ll soon mend it so that you’ll never know it’s been broken,” Hilary said in a kindly manner.

“I once saw it done in Venice, when I was buying necklaces for a girl,” she explained, smiling at Rosa’s mistake.

During the brief conversation Le Taureau stood silent beside his partner, scowling at Hilary. All at once Rosa turned on him, anxious to be rid of the old love before starting on the new.

“Clumsy! You did. You caught it in your sleeve when you were prancing round like an elephant. Don’t stand there gaping at the damage you’ve done. Go and sit down and leave this gentleman in peace to mend it.”

In an angry manner he slouched back to his table. Once there, he stayed glowering at Hilary. Unconscious of his scrutiny she sat with the necklace before her, grading the loose beads and awaiting Rosa’s return with needle and cotton.

Presently two small heads, one smooth and golden, the other fluffy and black, were close together as Hilary repaired the necklace according to Venetian methods.

When it was finished, with many thanks Rosa slipped it on, but she showed no signs of moving.

“I do so love dancing,” Rosa sighed. “But no one here dances properly. I like the tango best of all. Can you dance it, monsieur?” she asked, fixing Hilary with big eyes.

“I know it pretty well.” Then some imp of mischief compelled Hilary to add, “Shall we have a try when this dance is finished?”

Hilary had never dealt with a mechanical piano before. In her masculine rôle, she knew she would be expected to provide the music.

Hands deep in her pockets, cigarette between her lips, and Rosa at her side, she strolled across to the instrument.

With many giggles and much coquetry Rosa instructed her cavalier in the mysteries of the machine.

Knowing Rosa, the assembly watched the proceedings in an interested manner, with an occasional glance at Le Taureau.

When the tango started, several aspiring couples took the floor, but all attention was centered on Rosa and her partner. The young stranger’s performance was a revelation of grace and skill, and it filled all the men with envy.

Paul Laurient watched, wondering to what nation this slim, pretty, overdressed, undersized lad belonged, thinking Hilary a very effeminate and decidedly flirtatious little dandy, no credit to any country.

When the dance was over Hilary took her partner back to her own table. Having now entered thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, she determined to play the rôle of cavalier to the fullest.

“Let me order something for you, mademoiselle?” she said when they were seated.

Delighted at her victory Rosa prattled away in great form to her host, accepting a cigarette and lighting it from the one between Hilary’s lips.

As Hilary’s arm circled her partner’s waist, over her head a thick, savage voice said:

At the voice Rosa screamed, suddenly remembering Le Taureau’s threat to smash any man she danced with.

Towering over her was a giant of a man, his dark face flushed with drink and anger.

“You doll-faced little rat,” Le Taureau went on, “I’ll soon make you so that she’ll never look at you again.”

Before Hilary could explain the situation a great hairy fist was aimed at her face. She dodged, but it caught her on the side of the head with a force that made the world go hazy and spin around her. She staggered back, and only a wall kept her from falling. There she leant, gazing up at Le Taureau in a dazed, frightened manner.

Her head spinning, Hilary just looked up at him, too sick and stunned to put her case into words.

The men around started to their feet, not with any idea of interfering, but merely to get a better view of the fight. According to their code Le Taureau was within his rights.

He wished the little foreigner would put up some sort of a fight. He wished it desperately, for he hated cowardice. The stranger would not have the ghost of a chance against Le Taureau; but Paul wished he would strike one blow in his own defence, not stand there staring up at the bully, like a frightened girl.

Those wide eyes gazing up in a dazed, helpless manner at Le Taureau grew more than Paul could bear.

It was the voice of authority, but Le Taureau was too savagely jealous to heed it.

“It’s not a fair fight,” Paul went on. “He’s not half your size, and a foreigner into the bargain.”

“He can flirt with my girl so he can fight me,” Le Taureau said doggedly, making another lunge at Hilary.

Quickly Paul put himself between the great hairy fist and the dazed white face, and the blow caught him on the shoulder.

To Hilary the world was a giddy haze of pain, the only tangible thing in it the young man from the mimosa grove, whom she dimly realized now stood between her and her assailant.

Ignoring his landlord Le Taureau made another lunge at Hilary. Paul countered this also. At the same time, getting in one of his own, he struck the bully a stinging blow on the face.

“By hell,” he cried, “I’ll settle you first and then I’ll finish that little white rat.”

At his words a sharp hiss went through the watchers, the catch of many breaths. Le Taureau must be both drunk and crazy to threaten the seigneur.

“If you must fight, fight someone more your own size, not that slip of a lad,” he retorted, tearing off his own coat.

None of them had ever seen the marquis raise his hand against anybody before. Most of the men present despised their seigneur. His mode of life was one they could not understand. If he wished, he could have had both money and women, yet he took neither. Within his grasp was an endless round of pleasure, and he had chosen the path of penury and hard work. They considered him little better than a lunatic for refusing the good things of this earth on account of a few scruples.

Quick as the onlookers circled round the combatants, the fight had started almost before the ring was formed.

Le Taureau intended to dispose of Paul as soon as possible and then settle his score with Hilary. He had no fear of his present opponent. He was by far the bigger and stronger man. He did not know that in his prosperous days the young marquis had been taught the art of self-defence, and had proved a most skilful and scientific boxer.

With height and weight against him Paul knew his best policy would be to tire his opponent before the actual battle began.

Within a very few minutes Le Taureau had forgotten all about Hilary. His adversary was fighting in a way he did not understand; a way that wore him out and brought very little result. Presently it occurred to him that victory might not be his, and the mere idea of being worsted before Rosa infuriated him.

As the fight went on, the crowd that had gathered round expecting to see their seigneur knocked out within a few minutes, grew silent; a tense, watching silence, punctuated with cries of “Le Taureau,” “St. Anthony.”

These two cries reached Hilary when she recovered a little from the stunning effects of the blow.

She became aware that a battle was raging somewhere near. Between the shoulders of the onlookers she saw the boy from the mimosa grove fighting the man who had struck her. In a numb way she realized she was responsible for the fracas.

The boy was like a rapier, so quick and strong and graceful and slender; the man was a great bludgeon, all strength and weight and ungainliness.

Hilary would have escaped, but she could not. She was hemmed in a corner by a circle of men. To attract attention to herself by pushing through them was what she could not have endured.

By now Le Taureau had lost control of himself completely. He was hitting out wildly, savagely—thundering blows. Paul’s blood was up, but he had not lost his temper. With eyes that were molten pools of fire he watched his enemy; dodging, countering, striking, according to his opportunities.

Once Le Taureau caught him a smashing blow that sent him flying, reeling and staggering right back to the circle of onlookers, to drop there as if done and broken. But he was up almost at once, and, dashing the blood from his eyes, again faced his adversary.

Presently fatigue began to tell on the bully. His breath came in painful, sobbing gasps. His arms struck out mechanically as if there was no strength behind them.

The cries of “Le Taureau” began to die down, and those of “St. Anthony” increased.

The crowd was now talking in a quick, excited manner. The seigneur was winning. In spite of his queer ways he had proved himself a man and a fighter.

What they said was in the patois, unintelligible to Hilary. But she had no difficulty in guessing “St. Anthony” was her champion. “The Bull” fitted the other man so well.

He attacked in a series of skilful smashes, finally getting in a telling blow under the jaw, which sent his opponent flying.

With a quick haughty glance Paul silenced the crowd. He did not want reclaim, only fair play. Le Taureau spoiling for a fight had set upon a shrimp of a lad. He had his fight, but with a different opponent.

Le Taureau scowled at him, but he said nothing. To Rosa he had frequently made sneering remarks about her foster-brother. Yet, in a public café, in front of her, the boy had beaten him at his own special game.

“Let this be a lesson to you,” Paul continued in a lordly manner. “Next time you want to fight, set on someone more your own size.”

Le Taureau ignored the hand. He had always disliked his young landlord, now he hated him savagely.

With a shrug of his shoulders Paul turned away. Taking his coat from one of the men, he looked round for the youngster who had been the cause of the trouble, intending to give him a word of warning also.

In the excitement of the finish, when the crowd surged round the victor, she had slipped out, her only desire to escape unnoticed.

The next afternoon, when Paul was working in his garden, he heard a motor stop outside. Cars seldom came up the narrow lane leading to his stronghold, and the ones that did generally brought the Count de Naudin.

Nowadays, there was no love lost between the young marquis and his uncle; the boy never even troubled to go forward and greet his guardian.

When he turned, Hilary had great difficulty in suppressing a gasp. It was such a battered young face that looked at her. One eye was black, there was a gash on his forehead, and his lips were cut and swollen. What was more, his open shirt showed great bruises on the brown skin of his chest.

“I say, it was awfully decent of you to chip in on my account,” she said a trifle breathlessly.

Paul had thought hard thoughts about Hilary: that the young foreigner was not only a coward but a cad, sneaking out of the café and away from the row he was the cause of.

“You’re a stranger here, or I’d have let you work out your own salvation,” he answered none too cordially. “And if you take my advice,” he went on, “don’t go flirting with every pretty girl you see. The men in these parts are rather fiery. They don’t stand poachers on their preserves. You won’t always get off as lightly as you did yesterday.”

Mention of her sex trembled on Hilary’s lips, but something kept it back. Against great odds he had championed the weak. If she had had time yesterday to explain matters, the battle need not have been, but it seemed unkind to tell him so.

“I suppose it was rather foolish of me,” she replied, “but a girl as pretty as she was could turn any man’s head.”

Hilary was not susceptible. She knew exactly what she wanted in the way of a man, and if her ideal never materialized was prepared to go through life single.

“And why on earth didn’t you try and get a hit in, instead of just standing and staring at that great bully?” his voice went on in a tone of contempt.

“I was too surprised. Fights don’t come about so quickly in England, or from such trivial causes. Besides, that blow he gave me knocked me quite silly for the time being.”

On hearing his visitor was English Paul experienced a feeling of keen disappointment. This weedy youth was not at all his idea of an Englishman.

He would have liked to ask Hilary if it were necessary to sneak out of the café in that cowardly manner, but his visitor looked such a child that he could scold no more. Then, because he was only a boy himself, very lonely and craving for company, and because his visitor belonged to a nation he adored—even if a poor specimen of that nation—he put his contempt aside and crossing to the gate opened it.

As he spoke he gave Hilary a shy, grave smile. Paul seldom smiled nowadays. Life was too hard; his lot too bitter. He hated his present mode of existence. He hated to think there was no way out unless he married money. And marry money he was determined he would not. Marius, the haughty Roman, scorned the idea of being dependent on a woman.

Wondering how much his visitor knew about him, Paul led the way to the seat under the cherry tree.

“Sit down,” he said, brushing the fallen cherry blossoms from the seat. “Will you have a glass of wine? It’s my own making. And it’s not often I have a visitor to share it with.”

Hilary sat down. By now she had realized that her chance acquaintance was very superior to his class, but she attached no special meaning to it. She had traveled widely in Spain and Italy, countries where the merest workmen often had the ways and manners of dukes.

“Do you really make your own wine? I’ve never tasted home-made wine, but I’d like to try yours.”

Paul disappeared into his cottage, to re-appear a moment later with two thick glasses and a dusty bottle.

All connected with wine making he had learnt during his sojourn with the peasant farmer. The bottle was one left over from the first year of his rebellion, like some of the light wines of the country at its best when about three years old.

“What a splendid little holding you have,” Hilary said by way of conversation. “Is it yours?”

Paul was busy with the corkscrews, but he cast a sharp glance at her. Rapidly it was dawning on him that his visitor had no idea who he really was. Knowing himself to be the local freak, he was relieved to think he need not explain to this chance acquaintance the reason of his present mode of life.

After the wine was poured out, as conversation flagged, Hilary drew out her cigarette case and offered it to her host.

With earth-stained fingers Paul picked one out. Nowadays good cigarettes never came his way. A packet of the cheapest variety once a week was all he could afford.

“I love that old castle,” she volunteered. “This is the fourth time I’ve been here to have a look at it.”

To admire his castle was a short cut to Paul’s heart. Dilapidated as it was, it was all that now remained to him of the past glory of his family.

“From what I hear of the marquis,” she remarked, “he and I would have a lot in common.”

A sardonic look crossed Paul’s battered face. Despising flirts and cowards and dandies, he did not consider that he and his present companion had much in common.

Her wine finished and refusing a second glass, there was a brief pause as Hilary searched round for another topic of conversation. Her host seemed both shy and reserved, broaching no subject of his own, merely answering her questions and remarks.

Surreptitiously she studied him anew as he lounged beside her, smoking with lingering enjoyment the cigarette she had given him. How strong and graceful and handsome he was! Although Hilary knew nothing about Andreani from Ancient Greece, Paul reminded her of the statue of some young Greek god, and she was acutely aware of the physical allure he had for her.

Why wasn’t he Jack Selby? Or even Louis Morelli? As far as that she might descend in the social scale. But down to a laborer! That was going a bit too far even in these democratic days. Yet occasionally girls of her class married their grooms and chauffeurs. How such things happened she had never understood until now. But for the shock it would give her mother she, herself, would be sorely tempted to throw everything to the four winds and——

Pride suddenly tripped Hilary up, leaving her amazed at where the wandering stream of her thoughts had carried her.

Quickly she switched her mind away from the all too fascinating subject of her host.

“Yes, if you don’t mind a stiff climb. Going round by the road it’s about ten kilometres.”

“I’ll park my car in the mimosa grove and go this way,” she said, remembering having seen a gap in the stone wall.

“There are plenty more where these come from,” she answered lightly ignoring the insinuation.

With the idea of running her car into the grove she got to her feet and went towards the road.

With grudging admiration he watched the proceedings. A coward, a flirt and a dandy this chance acquaintance might be, but he was an expert motorist. In the days before the smash Paul had driven a car, and he knew the skill that was needed to manœuvre that little two-seater from the narrow lane, through the gap in the wall and into his mimosa grove.

The climb down into the valley and up the crags on the other side to the castle proved more than Hilary had bargained for.

“I know a way of getting in,” Paul said when they reached the old place. “Follow that path round to the front and I’ll meet you there.”

He indicated a little track through a wilderness of tall spiky genista, erica, aloes, myrtle and prickly pears.

The keys of his castle were in the possession of his guardians, but it took more than locked doors to keep the youngster out of his own premises.

He started to climb up the ivy on one of the square towers, towards a window on the third floor, the only one in view that had not an iron grille over it.

“Can’t I come that way too?” Hilary asked, anxious to redeem her reputation.

Paul knew his companion was tired out by the killing pace he had set since leaving the cottage. Purposely he had done it, to try and make the other cry a halt. Hilary had struggled on, determined to keep up with him, and the fact had filled Paul with another grudging spasm of admiration.

“You’ve done enough,” he said. “Get along to the front. I’ll meet you there.”

Scrambling over great rocks, out of which the castle seemed to grow, eventually she reached a smooth plateau surrounded by a crumbling wall. Within the walls grew cypress, magnolia, arbutus, ilex, mimosa, tall cacti and palms. There were stone seats, chipped and moss-grown, and broken pergolas wreathed with wistaria and roses. Her way led through a sort of orchard where every kind of fruit tree grew—orange, lemon, peach, pear and cherry, and here and there was a wide, deep, cracked, old reservoir, now weed-grown and empty.

At close quarters the castle was a rugged place, wind worn and patched with gnarled ivy, with barred windows and great buttresses.

Skirting the chateau Hilary halted near a heavy wooden door, studded and iron-bound, and set deep in the thick, old walls.

Presently, the sound of rusty bolts being moved made her go in that direction. The door opened with a creak and groan as if it had not been used for centuries. As a matter of fact it was very rarely used, but the more modern entrances were locked against their rightful owner.

Its opening showed a huge, flagged hall with rough, stone walls, heavy rafters, deep, narrow windows, and an ancient carved gallery at one end. Here and there was a massive piece of black furniture; hung on the walls was an assortment of old-world arms and armour.

“Entrez,” he said, smiling down at his visitor, the shy smile that Hilary found so fascinating.

She went up wide, shallow steps hewn out of solid rock, into the hall; a gloomy place full of ancient shadows.

On entering it seemed to the girl those shadows bore down upon her, fluttering around her, giving her a ghostly welcome: that the deep, pleasant notes of the young man’s voice echoed again and again from walls and beams and rafters, finally to die away like a sigh of relief somewhere in the heart of the old castle.

From the great hall a few well worn stone steps led up into the modernized part of the building; a series of low beamed rooms with polished floors, huge fireplaces, and leaded windows let into deep embrasures, each with a carved wooden seat wide as a divan.

She was taken along huge, resounding corridors, frescoed and flagged, which tiny, stained-glass windows filled with a sort of rainbow gloom, and up wide, stone staircases with wonderful bent-iron bannisters, now red with rust and falling to pieces.

Most of the rooms were empty save for spiders, and all were sadly in need of repair.

“The present marquis is very poor, isn’t he?” Hilary asked during her survey, regretting the state of decay the old place was getting into.

“None at all. It’s the last thing he has left. The only thing war profiteers haven’t filched from him,” he said, suppressed bitterness in his voice.

Paul’s mind was on the detested Morellis. He hated them and all their kidney. Grudgingly he had to admit they had one quality he did not possess. At least they knew how to get on in the world, a problem he felt he could never solve.

At his answer Hilary heaved an inward sigh. From two sources she had heard the same story.

“I do wish he could be persuaded to part with it,” she said regretfully. “I love it so. And I could make him a really good offer.”

Paul glanced at the slim figure beside him—in male attire Hilary looked about sixteen—wondering how this slip of a lad had the luck to have unlimited cash at his disposal.

“You must have very lenient guardians,” he commented, “if they indulge all your fancies, even unto the buying of castles.”

Forgetful of time she lingered, admiring every room and view, thinking what a perfect place she could make of it.

Eventually Paul went up a narrow, twisted stairway, to one of the towers, and turning a rusty key, opened a thick, wooden door set in a deep stone arch.

It gave entrance to a couple of vaulted rooms, with frescoed walls, stone floors and narrow, slit windows, set high up and barred, through which ivy peeped. One room looked rather like a study. It contained a wide divan piled with cushions and rugs, an old bureau, a table, a couple of wooden chairs, and several shelves of books.

In the days before the smash this had been Paul’s special sanctum. He visited it still, unknown to his persecutors. Within ancient walls that had sheltered quite thirty generations of his name—for there had been Laurients of Rochefallain long before they had received their title—he frequently pondered on the difficult problem of himself trying to think of some means of retrieving his fortune. Always he came reluctantly to the conclusion that he was of no use at all in the present-day world. He could not roughly and ruthlessly elbow his way to fortune as Jules Morelli had. Only by marrying money could he ever hope to be rich again. And he agreed with himself that he would rather remain poor all his life than sink to that.

That it might be possible for him to love a girl who had money never occurred to the youngster. He was so sensitive on this point, so afraid of being accused of fortune-hunting, that the mere fact of her wealth would prevent any tender feeling entering his heart, no matter how attractive she herself might prove when produced for his inspection.

From those rooms in the tower a door led on to the battlements, from which could be obtained a wide view of the Rochefallain estate.

On seeing that great sweep of hill and dale, more than ever Hilary wanted the castle.

“What a lovely view!” she exclaimed. “I do envy the marquis. I could live here for ever and be happy. Tell me his address. I shall go to him at once and make him an offer.”

“Most people succumb if they’re offered enough money. Tell me where he lives,” Hilary insisted.

Paul was up in arms at the mere suggestion that money would induce him to part with his cherished possession.

Seating herself on the wide, lichen-covered wall Hilary drew out her cigarette case and offered it to her guide.

Paul was thoroughly disgruntled. Now, much as he loved a good cigarette, he would not accept the smallest favor from his new acquaintance.

In his refusal Hilary read that he wanted to get back to work and was too polite to say so. She glanced at her wrist watch and to her amazement discovered that over two hours had passed since she entered his cottage gate.

She got to her feet again, thinking that when they parted company he would find the tip she gave him would amply repay any time he had lost on her account.

When Jules Morelli bought the Rochefallain villa in Cannes, he bought the contents also. Even in those days he saw Paul as his son-in-law and intended to hand the place back intact to his daughter’s husband.

Among the contents were several portraits of the Laurients. These he had collected together, and with others bought from the castle, had had them put into a large gallery he had had built on to the villa. Although his plans had not materialized the pictures still remained, and the room they were in was now used by his son as a museum for antiques.

After dinner the younger Morelli took his more important guests—the Selbys and Hilary Fane—to the gallery.

Once there, he drew out a bunch of keys and led the way to a tall old cabinet. Unlocking the door he brought to light a collection of antique rings set out on white velvet.

As ring after ring was brought out and handed round the little circle, Hilary’s attention was more on the pictures than the jewels; mostly portraits of swarthy, hawk-faced men in the attire of days gone by; some of whom in a strange way were vaguely familiar, and all of whom were patricians of the old school—very different from her present company.

All the time she was trying to recollect whom they reminded her of, only giving half an ear to what Louis Morelli was saying about his collection.

Presently, a shrill, affected scream from Yvonne brought her attention wholly to the matter on hand.

Hilary looked at the jewel Morelli was in the act of handing her, a Louis Quinze ring with a large flat emerald.

“I’ve written to several dealers asking them to advise me if they have anything of the sort. I intend to see you get what you want, and at the same time the best possible value for your money.”

“It’s very good of you to take so much trouble. I’m only an amateur and it gives me a nice safe feeling to know I’ve an expert behind me.”

“It’s no trouble at all. I’m only too pleased to be of any use. I’m so interested in these things myself that I positively enjoy going on the track of a good specimen.”

“You’ll find Hilary a hard nut to crack, old chap,” he put in, “or I shouldn’t still be an ineligible bachelor. Don’t say I haven’t warned you.”

Hilary was used to banter from this source, but she did not want Louis Morelli to be made the butt of Jack Selby’s humor. To change the conversation she glanced at the portraits on the wall.

“This villa used to belong to the Marquis of Rochefallain. They are portraits of the family.”

“They’re all awfully good-looking,” Yvonne said. “You must let me introduce Gaston. He’s the image of the present marquis.”

Seizing Hilary’s arm she dragged her across to the far end of the long gallery, and halted before a large picture, the portrait of a young officer in the uniform of the First Empire.

Hilary knew the face quite well. Only that afternoon its double had taken her over the old castle.

“Gaston, fourteenth Marquis of Rochefallain,” Yvonne said, waving a plump, heavily-ringed hand towards the picture. “Paul is exactly like him and such a nice boy, too. His peasants call him ‘St. Anthony.’ ”

“Too much restraint isn’t good for that young man,” he commented. “One of these days there’ll be a terrific explosion. The ‘Volcanic Laurients’, you know.”

“If ever there was a young man who didn’t know which side his bread was buttered it is the present Marquis of Rochefallain,” her brother said in a teasing manner.

“No, I don’t. I agree he’s a thoroughly decent sort. But he is not in step with the times. He’s so inflated with the glory of the Rochefallain past, that he can’t see the grandeur of the Morelli present.”

Louis resented Paul’s attitude towards his sister. His passion for antiques showed him that the young marquis was a perfect specimen of his class, and he would have liked to have him in the Morelli museum.

Ever since that vision of her sons there had been a queer, hopeless ache somewhere inside of her, that had increased each time she saw the young man from the mimosa grove; a feeling that she was never to have any of the things she really wanted.

The pain vanished suddenly. Life, until now so aimless, all at once achieved a purpose, brought about by a handsome boy in blue rags, who needed an heir and a fortune.

The name was carved as clearly on her mind as it had been on the oak chest by the heap of straw.

She wondered how he came to be living in such a state of abject poverty, and why he had not told her who he really was, yet admiring him all the more for his modesty and reticence.

On returning from her survey of the castle, just as she started her car, she had crumpled up a hundred franc note and passed it to him. Surprised he had taken the ball of paper and started to straighten it out. As the car moved on she had had a glimpse of him staring at it in a bewildered manner, and he had made no attempt to thank her. She thought he had been struck dumb by her generosity. Now she knew better. He had been too surprised and hurt to say anything.

“Hello!” he said, sauntering up and surveying the picture. “Who’s our conquering hero?”

“The great great grandfathers of the present Marquis of Rochefallain,” Yvonne informed him.

“A chance for you Hilary,” Selby said, “From all accounts the present holder of the title is a very innocent young man, not a hardened sinner like yours truly. And you like ’em young, with the down still on. He has to marry money I hear, and so far his guardians haven’t found it in a form he will swallow. You might suit him—young, pretty, well-bred, £10,000 a year, and another £10,000 in the offing. Louis, what about trotting out Hilary for his inspection? But it’s understood, my girl, that if the match comes off, I get ten per cent on the deal. My brainy idea.”

He knew his sister. Yvonne jealous would be the very devil to deal with, capable of going any length. If she suspected a rival in Miss Fane she would be quite equal to behaving in a manner that would make the English girl avoid having anything more do with them.

“Miss Fane is not likely to meet the marquis,” he said quickly. “He is an absolute recluse nowadays and avoids everybody.”

Hilary let his statement pass unchallenged. Had she mentioned that she had already met the young man under discussion she knew she would have to run a further gauntlet of Jack Selby’s remarks. Moreover, she had seen the jealousy on Yvonne’s face, and it made her decide to keep secret her acquaintance with the marquis.

The following morning Paul was working in his vineyard. It was situated on a terrace some twelve feet below the cottage, and its position dulled all sounds from above. As he was digging between the vines, an unexpected voice made him look up sharply.

That hundred franc note rankled. It had been thrust upon him as he stood admiring the silver car, too engrossed to notice much what was happening. Before he had recovered from his astonishment the donor was out of sight. Holding the note as if it were some poisonous thing, he had taken it back to the hovel and pinned it up on the wall there—the first tip a Marquis of Rochefallain had ever received. Each glimpse of it was a lash on his sensitive soul, for it said how low he had fallen.

“I don’t see that it was at all necessary,” he said stiffly, in reply to Hilary’s question.

Since the previous evening she had found out a good deal about the rebel, and how he came to be in his present position. She knew the tip must have hurt. He was too young and in too great straits to treat the matter as a joke, and she would not have hurt him for worlds.

“Well, if I’d known who you were I shouldn’t have given you that note, and you’d have saved yourself an uncomfortable quarter of an hour.”

He had not credited this young dandy with much thought or discrimination. He was generous enough to admit to himself that the fault was not all his visitor’s. For services such as he had rendered, any one of his peasants would have expected a handsome reward.

“I’ll give it back to you,” he said in a more cordial tone, “and then we’ll forget about it.”

With this end in view, and anxious to get rid of his visitor as quickly as possible—Paul dreaded comments and questions on his mode of life—he climbed up the narrow stepping stones jutting out from the rocky wall, and went into the cottage.

He was such a nice boy, so poor and proud and yet so modest, so quick to defend the weak, so anxious to oblige and help and assist. She felt she must snatch him away at once from his arduous, unnatural life and give him all a young man of his position ought to have.

But she had a little scheme of her own to work out; a scheme that filled her with a secret delight and left her eyes more luminous than usual.

This was Provence. The land of dreams. The country of romance. And she intended to have her share of the latter.

He thought she was a boy. She would meet him as man to man, without the glamour of sex between them: probe deep into his heart and mind and soul, learn his strengths and his weaknesses, his innermost thoughts. Then, if he came up to her hopes and expectations, she would declare her identity and leave the rest to him.

To forward her plans, before coming to the cottage she had taken extra pains with her attire, adding a few more masculine touches. A large, plain linen handkerchief now took the place of a small embroidered one. About her left wrist was a biggish, gun metal watch on a leather strap. On leaving her car she had rubbed her hands on an oily rag from the tool box to disguise their whiteness, not omitting to get a bit of dirt into her nails.

Her slender tapering limbs, with their fragile wrists and ankles, would have proclaimed her sex anywhere, but these were safely hidden by loose coat and shirt and baggy breeches, boots and leggings.

What her escapade might look like in the eyes of the young marquis, who would judge her by South Latin standards, Hilary did not pause to consider. She had ignored all conventions for so long that it never even occurred to her that her conduct did not conform to the ways of a country where young girls of her position were still strictly chaperoned and never allowed out alone. In France only one class of woman would behave in the way she contemplated. Also, in her delight at her scheme, she had quite forgotten Louis Morelli’s remark about the “Volcanic Laurients.”

Presently, holding the note as if afraid it might bite, Paul came out of the cottage.

To Hilary who loathed most of the insect tribe—the mere touch of some would set her screaming involuntarily—he reminded her of herself dealing with a hairy caterpillar.

“Here you are,” he said none too graciously, handing the obnoxious thing back to the source whence it came.

“I think you’re wonderful, holding out against all that mercenary crowd,” she said impulsively.

Since his rebellion Paul was used to sneers and abuse, but praise had not come his way before.

“And it’s most brave of you sticking to your own ideas in the face of such opposition, and enduring all this.”

Hilary’s hand went round in a little comprehensive gesture that included all Paul’s unnatural life and surroundings.

“I wish you could persuade my guardians into your way of thinking,” Paul said feelingly.

“It’s absolutely tragic that you should be reduced to such straits just because you’re trying to do the right thing.”

It dawned on Paul that this chance acquaintance had taken his case thoroughly to heart.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I manage to scratch along somehow. In three years’ time I shall be my own master. Then things won’t be quite so bad.”

He was prepared to face three more years of this arduous, unnatural, lonely life rather than give in.

Paul realized he had an unexpected ally in this slim little foreigner with the shining eyes. In a sudden access of pleasure and friendliness he laid an earth-grimed hand on Hilary’s shoulder.

“Come and have a drink and forget my troubles,” he said. “I’ve made my bed and intend to lie on it—at least, until I’m of age.”

Now that she was with him his straits affected her deeply. Her mind would dwell on the poor hovel that was his refuge, his bed of straw, his tattered clothes, the dry bread and handful of greenstuff that was his food. In her eyes, now, he looked half-starved, overworked, wholly neglected and uncared for. He was not a type that could really fend for himself, he was too sensitive and overbred. If she stayed much longer she would harrow herself into tears over his plight.

“I can’t wait just now. I’m in an awful hurry. But after I found out who you were I couldn’t let the day pass without telling you what—how—that I’m on your side.”

By now Paul had forgotten he had wanted his visitor gone. In his joy at having found a partisan he had forgotten also that he had ever despised or disliked this chance acquaintance.

“Do come and see me again if you can spare the time,” he said in a beseeching manner. “I never have a soul to talk to.”

The pleading note in his voice and the lost, lonely look in the dark eyes that watched her out of a boy’s half-starved face were almost more than Hilary could bear.

“Come to-morrow for lunch,” he said eagerly, with quick hospitality. “At least, that is if you don’t mind roughing it,” he added hastily, suddenly remembering his new friend appeared wealthy.

“I should love to come,” Hilary assured him. “How decent of you to ask me.”

After the affair in the Café des Maures Rosa Puget decided to avoid Le Taureau. He had never been welcome at her mother’s cottage, and usually he did not go there. The next evening, however, as she was not at their trysting place he called to see what had happened.

He left the cottage determined to waylay the girl and hear what she had to say on the matter.

Rosa proved a difficult person to catch. But he haunted a special path, knowing that sooner or later she would come that way.

One route from Mère Puget’s home to the nearest shop straggled through vineyards, olive groves, peach orchards, cork and pine woods, down one fragrant hillside and up another; a wriggling, indistinct track by which only the initiated could find their way.

At one point it dipped right down into a wild valley, strewn with boulders and sweet with the scent of wild lavender and rosemary, where a little stream pushed its way noisily through moss-grown stones. Up and down these sunny, scented slopes Rosa was wont to loiter when she went shopping, often in company with the favored swain of the moment.

As he sat, savage and brooding, on a flat rock at the bottom of the valley, a little figure in a black dress and a blue spotted apron, with a large marketing basket on one arm, emerged from a clump of mimosa trees on the opposite hillside.

He got up, a big, hulking figure, barring her way, looking at her in a hungry, angry manner.

“That’s no business of yours. I told you the other day your week was nearly up.”

“I want ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Now. This minute,” he shouted in a threatening manner.

Rosa had never had any intention of marrying him. It had amused her to flirt with him, but he had proved rather more than she had bargained for. She was the least bit afraid of him, and this fear made her put the onus of her refusal on her foster-brother.

“He’s our landlord. When he comes of age he can make things very uncomfortable for us if we don’t do what he wishes.”

“Before he comes of age, my Rosa, you and I will have started a little inn right away from here, where his likes and dislikes won’t matter.”

To start an inn with her present companion had no place in Rosa’s future plans.

“But I can’t take my mother and brothers with me. And I must consider them.”

Consideration for her own family he knew had never been one of the girl’s strong points. He put a great, stable-grimed paw under her chin, tilting her head back so that he could look deep into her eyes.

Twitching her head away, with a corner of her apron she wiped the place where his fingers had rested.

“I shouldn’t wait for us to be married,” he continued, ignoring her remark. “I should just take you some day when I caught you all alone like this.”

“What a great savage you are! But I’m not one who is driven into marriage by threats.”

She was beginning to realize this; also that he was not going to be cast off quite so easily as some of her previous lovers.

“I shall wait,” he continued. “Wait, until he loves a girl as much as I love you, Rosa. And then—I shall kill her.”

“There will be more than words if you don’t marry me. Now is it ‘yes’ or ‘no?’ ”

With a little tremor in her heart Rosa surreptitiously scanned the lonely landscape, fervently wishing she had one of her big brothers with her. Then she looked at the watchful, savage, suspicious face above her and decided to play for time and safety.

“What a man you are, Le Taureau,” she said smiling up at him. “No one has ever driven me into a corner like this before. How can I say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in one minute to one special man when there are twenty asking me the same question. My poor little head is so worried with all of you that I can’t make up my mind. Don’t stand there looking like a wild bull. Give me a kiss and say I may have one day to decide between you all.”

It needed only her smile and the offer of her lips to pacify him for the time being. But from that interview Rosa went on her way, determined in future to avoid all lonely routes.

The cherry blossom was a pure white froth against the blue of the Riviera sky when Hilary Fane first found her way to Paul Laurient’s refuge. By the time the flowers had faded the two were the firmest of friends.

Often they sat together on the wooden form under the tree, deep in conversation, the petals falling like a slow drift of snow around them. Paul did most of the talking. With his new ally he soon forgot his shyness and reserve. Hilary encouraged him to talk, drawing him out, leading him on, delving deep into his heart and mind and soul. Occasionally he broached the topic of herself, but she always steered him off with ease and skill, giving little facts—or fictions—which satisfied him and kept her secret hidden.

Every day she was at the cottage, or meeting him at the castle. For his new friend, Paul sacrificed his best. Chickens, eggs and honey, that should have been taken to Mère Puget, appeared on the rough table under the cherry tree when Hilary had been persuaded to stay for lunch or dinner.

In the early days of their friendship she had come upon him, with knitted brow, frying half a chicken over the brazier-like stove in the cottage kitchen.

“Burnt it may be, but sacrifice it isn’t. You’re the first real friend I’ve ever had. It’s little enough to offer, goodness knows. Besides, you’re always giving me things.”

Hilary’s gifts so far had consisted of a few cigarettes and two teas out at hotels, the latter forced down his throat by threatening to have no more meals at his cottage.

“If you weren’t so dashed proud, I’d give you a great deal more,” she said.

“Is that why you won’t marry money?” she asked, bringing the conversation round to a topic that had the greatest interest to her.

“Oh, heaps,” Paul answered. “Now heave another pine cone on,” he continued, lifting up the frying pan.

Leisurely Hilary made her choice from the heap of large pine cones in a corner, finally picking one nearly a foot long and about six inches in diameter and dropping it into the brazier according to instructions; but she did not turn from her subject.

“I couldn’t stand the humiliation of having every penny I spent doled out to me by a woman.”

“You wouldn’t mind if you loved her enough. Besides,” Hilary continued, “if she really loved you she’d find a way of giving it so that it didn’t hurt.”

“What a sentimental little devil you are. Another pine cone, please. And don’t take a week about it, or the fire gets too low.”

Through the steamy mist that rose from the frying pan she pictured him, her Paul, this ragged, forlorn boy, as he would be when she had married him.

She saw him in variegated sweater and baggy flannel trousers, playing tennis with her in her mother’s garden—Hilary had arranged with herself to spend her honeymoon quietly at home. She saw him in plus fours going long walks with her, the dogs at their heels, or driving the big racing car she intended to give him as a wedding present.

Already she had taken him out several times in her car. On hearing he had driven in his very young days, at once she had handed over the wheel. That little car was her treasure. Heretofore no one had been allowed to touch it but herself. But Paul was encouraged to rub up his rusty driving on it, and before long was going at breakneck speed, with all the recklessness of his youth and nation. Again Hilary could have wept over him, this time at his joy and delight.

She imagined him in lounge suit seeing the sights of London in her company, and in the evening attire that would suit him so well, dining and dancing with her. Everything she could give him he should have, to make up for the weary years in which he had fought for his ideal.

When he had seen something of the world and learnt to play as well as work, they would come back and start on Rochefallain, between them making it a model estate.

All these and many other dreams Hilary dreamt as the cherry blossom drifted slowly from the tree.

“One who could be as much my friend as you are, Hilary,” he answered promptly.

The name filled her with a sense of satisfaction. Outwardly at least she conformed with his ideal.

“Surely you won’t always be satisfied with a dream? I know I should want something more substantial.”

“What a budding Don Juan you are, Hilary. Always harping on women. If you go on at this rate what will you be at my age?”

Although he spoke in a teasing manner, there was a reproving note in his voice that made her want to hug him.

A trifle askance he glanced at her. The subject was a new one. Hilary saw he was shy of discussing it, and liked him all the better for his reluctance.

“My dear fellow, you’re fifty years behind the times. Nowadays in England one talks of everything. Besides I’m not in England now,” she added, “I’m here, in France—with you.”

“Now, Paul, no red herrings. You still haven’t given me an answer. What have you got to say about it?”

By now the young man was much too fond of his youthful ally to hold out against persistent questions.

“I’m not exactly an oyster,” he said under pressure. “Anyway, a kid like you knows nothing about such things.”

Hilary wondered what special ideal had kept him from going the way of most young men of his class and nation.

“Then why do you trouble to resist temptation?” she inquired, taking out her cigarette case and handing it to him.

“I’ve so little to offer the woman I marry,” he began in a hesitating answer. “No money, or anything like that. That I feel I ought—must——”

Her answer made him glance at her with the look of trust and affection she loved.

During the last three years Hilary had not done much in the way of praying. Now, there was a fervent prayer in her heart that she would be able to fulfill all the duties her love brought with it; that she might be a good wife to Paul, doing her best to blend their separate personalities into a sympathetic whole. It was for her to steer the barque of their love through the strange new sea of matrimony, avoiding the rocks of misunderstanding. Life had made her wise and left him ignorant. If their marriage turned out a failure it would be her fault. Paul had the rare gift of gratitude, and also was capable of a deep affection that had nothing to do with passion. Carefully handled he would always be her devoted friend and faithful lover.

Hilary encouraged Paul to talk about his estate, his peasants, and his duty towards them.

Sir Gerald Fane had been a model landlord, and his daughter had inherited her father’s talents. Moreover, she had a special fund of wisdom of her own, acquired of late years through mixing with all sorts and conditions. The Fanesdene methods could be applied to Rochefallain, allowing for the difference of race and country.

For the first time Hilary found herself thinking of her lost home without regret.

Best of all she loved to hear Paul on the subject of children. When he was in this vein she always wanted to draw his head on to her heart and croon over him. He was such a child himself, this poor, neglected, persecuted boy, to be talking of his children. She did not know that the need of an heir was dinned into him continually by his guardians.

“Talking of children,” he said one day, “in matters of that sort I think the woman should have the deciding vote. You see, all the uncomfortable part of the business is hers. When I marry I must have at least three sons to make the name safe, and it would be asking rather a lot, wouldn’t it?”

“There are lots of compensations. And after all, having children is a woman’s job,” she informed him.

“Well, most of them do it, so I don’t see why such a fuss need be made about it.”

Then she wanted to slip her arms about his neck, draw his proud mouth down to hers, kiss him and whisper:

But the game she was playing was too delightful to be brought to a close just yet.

Frequently business took Louis Morelli into Toulon. Sometimes, when she had special shopping to do, or friends to see, his sister went with him. During one portion of the journey the railways skirted the mountains in the midst of which the Rochefallain estate was situated. When this stage was reached Yvonne had a habit of gazing in a yearning manner out of the carriage window and giving vent to deep and frequent sighs.

One day, however, as they were traveling together through this district, Yvonne’s sighs turned to a sharp cry of amazement.

There was so much genuine surprise in her voice that he came out hastily from behind his paper, and gazed in the direction in which she was staring.

They were traveling at a point where the railway ran almost parallel with the highroad. Scorching along, obviously racing the train, was a little silver car.

Paul Laurient was at the wheel, his thick hair streaming in the wind, his head thrust a trifle forward, his eyes glued on the road as he tore along, and on his face a look of perfect bliss.

At his side was a boyish figure in white with smooth, cropped golden head, who kept looking from the train to him as the car forged gradually ahead, encouraging him with smiles and words and laughter.

“Miss Fane is not one who would broadcast her affairs,” Louis said slowly, a troubled note in his voice.

“It’s none of Count Naudin’s doings. I saw him in Monte Carlo only yesterday. And he still regretting that Paul couldn’t be brought round to a sensible mood about me,” Yvonne said in a choked voice.

Louis cast a sharp glance at his sister. She was working herself up into a boiling state of jealousy over what might be only a trifle. In his own mind he was perturbed at what he had seen. He understood Hilary. Her motoring with the young marquis did not worry him, but the fact that she had kept her acquaintance with him secret was rather disturbing.

“There’s nothing in it,” he said in a soothing tone. “English girls of her type have hosts of men friends.”

“Nothing in it! And she has money! Oh dear, what shall I do?” his sister wailed.

Louis retired behind his paper, not to read, but to think over the situation. Over its top, every now and again, he cast an uneasy glance at his sister.

“Look here, Yvonne,” he said presently. “Don’t start being rude to Miss Fane.”

“Over your affair with her you’ve been as flabby as a fish ten days out of water.”

“I know my own limitations and I know her,” he said, goaded into an explanation. “She’s not a type that money can buy, or we might have been engaged by now. She will choose her own man, it’s not a case of the man choosing her. This being so, I can only show her my most attractive side and hope for the best.”

“I don’t know why I should make all this fuss when Paul has shown so plainly he doesn’t want anything to do with me,” she finished.

Yvonne stayed looking at him as if she considered him the most stupid of God’s created creatures.

“Louis,” she said presently, “show me the ring you bought for Miss Fane.”

Glad the storm had passed so quickly he drew a small leather case from an inner pocket and passed it over.

To see a ring of the kind Hilary wanted, had been among the reasons that had taken him to Toulon. As it had come up to the description he had bought it.

Yvonne opened the case, and taking out the jewel, slipped it on one of her fingers.

There was a day Paul Laurient never liked to think about—the day when his friend would go back to England. Sooner or later it was bound to come. Hilary was now such a part of his life that he wondered how he would get along alone.

In spite of the new interests that temporarily colored his drab and lonely existence, he did not neglect his garden. He rose even earlier than usual, and in the evening worked until it was quite dark, so as to have all the time he could with his new ally. Yet, he could not keep pace with the spring. Land had to be prepared and seeds sown during his friend’s visits, to keep his tattered banner of independence flying.

On these occasions Hilary would prowl round his holding. Everything in it had a fascination for her because it was his.

One afternoon when Paul was preparing a trench, and Hilary poking somewhere about his premises, sudden and unexpected sounds reached him—gasping little screams of terror.

The young man looked round sharply, wondering where the noise was coming from. The sounds were like those of a frightened woman, and no woman ever came to his stronghold.

To his amazement he saw his friend coming towards him, looking at him with wild, imploring eyes set in a blanched and terrified face. The lips, usually so firm and red, were now white and parted. And from those lips the sounds were issuing!

“Paul. Paul. There’s something crawling on me. Take it off. Oh, take it off,” she cried frantically.

In an agony of repulsion at the touch of some loathsome insect Hilary had lapsed back into English. With trembling, fumbling hand she was trying to undo her right cuff.

Dropping his spade, in a moment Paul was at her side, and with deft fingers quickly unfastened the pearl links of the soft double cuff.

This brought to light a wrist so frail that he could have snapped it with his thumb and finger.

Paul had no time to dwell on this discovery. He had caught sight of something else which filled him with alarm and dismay—a tiny black scorpion.

It was a poisonous creature, not deadly, but its sting could make a person very ill. With the uncanniness of its tribe, realizing it was being hunted, it scuttled still further up Hilary’s arm, and out of sight.

Without hesitation Paul drew out his pruning knife, and ripped up the loose coat and shirt sleeves from wrist to shoulder. His action disclosed a slender, tapering limb, milk-white, and smooth and delicately rounded. In the middle of the upper arm, now standing in a defensive attitude, was the scorpion.

When Hilary saw that foul black thing on her flesh her screams increased. In an agony of repulsion she tried to flick it off, an action that only enraged the insect.

Paul had hoped to get it off without frightening or infuriating it; slowly and carefully with the flat of his knife, so that if it stung, its sting would fall on the steel blade. But the sight of that delicate, beautiful arm had filled him with such amazement that he just stared at it, his head buzzing.

Before he had recovered sufficiently to do anything it was too late. The scorpion stabbed its poisonous tail into Hilary’s flesh and dropped off.

Except for long, shuddering gasps of relief she was still enough now, not minding the sting so long as the loathsome insect was no longer on her. But Paul knew the matter was not yet finished with.

Seizing her arm firmly, with his knife he made a criss-cross incision on the livid spot where the sting had penetrated, deep enough to let the blood flow freely. Then, bending his head, he started to suck the wound. A prompt measure that would keep the virus from spreading, and would mean only a small sore and a little local inflammation, instead of a poisoned arm and fever.

He was very conscious of the soft coolness and the faint violet perfume of the arm his hands held and his lips touched, a softness and weakness such as he had never felt before, and which filled him with a sense of infinite protection.

That his friend was effeminate he had always known, but many of the youths of his own nation were. Yet surely no boy could have an arm like this! No boy could have screamed in that frightened, girlish way!

To Paul it seemed as if that faint violet perfume rose like raw spirit to his brain, leaving him muddled and bewildered. And his pulses hammered so that he could not think clearly.

No girl would have such a smooth cropped head or go about in breeches. No girl would drive alone all over the countryside, often returning to Cannes after dark. No girl could vault walls as this youngster could, climb up those crags to the castle, or catch with such skill and agility any article thrown to her. No girl could probe—in a manner that aroused his greatest admiration—into the most intimate parts of a motor, or drive at fifty miles an hour without turning a hair, or go about all day long with a cigarette between her lips.

Paul based his ideas on the French girls of his own class whom he had met in his father’s time: demure little beings who did none of these things.

Yet no boy could have screamed in that manner. And surely no boy could have an arm like this!

If his friend were a girl, she might not come again if he questioned her on the matter, or if she thought he had discovered her secret.

His convictions swaying around him, Paul kept his face over the wound, every now and again ejecting the poisoned blood, endeavoring to pull himself together so that he could face Hilary in his usual manner.

The cut of the knife had made her wince, but she had not screamed. Now, she was wondering how she had acted from the time she felt something crawling on her until the loathsome creature dropped off, well aware that in such situations her senses were apt to leave her.

She shivered again, this time at the strong, careful grip of those slim brown hands and the touch of those proud lips on her bare flesh.

“Oh, carry on,” she said in a composed voice. “I know I’m a silly ass, but I always am with the insect tribe. They leave me just gibbering.”

“There’s nothing foolish in being afraid of scorpions,” he said. “I don’t exactly love them myself, and I’m much more used to them than you are.”

There and then she decided that before many days were out she would surprise him by coming up in petticoats. Straightway she made up her mind to buy a new and special frock for Paul’s undoing. The touch of his lips was too delightful to be postponed indefinitely. It filled her with an aching and a craving such as she had never experienced before.

“There, that’ll do,” he said presently. “Let me have your handkerchief.”

Hilary did not pause to consider that Paul had a long line of diplomats behind him, men trained to veil their thoughts and feelings. Now his heritage stood him in good stead. All he suspected he kept hidden away beneath the brown velvet of his eyes.

“I’ve made a mess of your coat and shirt,” he went on, as with steady fingers he wrapped the handkerchief round the wound. “But there was no time to consider them. I’ll get a bit of string,” he continued, “and we’ll tie the sleeves on, then you won’t go back looking too much of a casualty. And I don’t think a drink will do you any harm,” he concluded.

As Paul went back to his hovel to get the string and the glass of wine he still could not believe what his senses told him.

It was mid-afternoon when Hilary left Paul’s cottage. The moment she was out of sight, determined to find out the truth, he fetched his bicycle and started off for Cannes, a place he had not visited since his rebellion.

At half-past four he left home. At half-past eight, hot, tired and dusty he reached the town. Going into a stationer’s shop he bought a local paper and scanned the visitors’ list. What he saw there set his heart beating far more than the exertion of the long ride.

The blood beating in his head he stood gazing at the paper, wanting to rush straight to her and see how she looked in the light of this new knowledge.

Then he recollected his attire. In his haste he had come away in the tattered blue cotton suit and canvas shoes that were his everyday garb.

Putting his bicycle into the custody of the newsagent Paul made his way towards the hotel, avoiding as far as possible the main roads for fear of meeting people who knew him. He did not want acquaintances of old days to see how low the last of the Rochefallains had fallen.

When the hotel was reached he slipped into the garden and prowled round outside the building, peering in at various windows. Into several rooms he looked without seeing any sign of his quarry. Then the sound of a band came suddenly to drown the soft sighs of the night.

Stealthily he made his way in that direction, coming to a halt in a shrubbery close to which was an open French window. He dared not go any nearer for fear of being seen and questioned as to what he—a creature in rags—was doing, skulking outside this abode of wealth and luxury.

From where he stood he could see only one portion of the room, and that was crowded with dancers. Eagerly he scanned each couple who came into that section, but he did not see the face he wanted.

Dance after dance went on. Still he watched and waited, envying the men. They all looked so well-dressed and prosperous, whilst he had to skulk outside like a beggar.

All at once he saw coming towards the open window a tall, slim girl in a straight, short, sleeveless frock of gold tissue, a girl with the most fragile of wrists and ankles and the most beautiful of slender, tapering limbs. She had a sleek, cropped golden head. Long amber earrings dangled from her ears, and on her feet were little gilt slippers. A girl who carried herself proudly and looked at the world frankly out of wide hazel eyes set in a fresh, boyish face.

Hilary it must be! On that beautiful arm was the glimpse of a narrow white bandage that a broad bold bangle did not quite hide. But a Hilary so different that his bones seemed to melt within him, leaving him all limp and shaking.

She was a vision of gold and alabaster, her only touch of color, a big emerald ring that flashed like green fire on her right hand.

Paul wanted to throw himself at her feet. To crave permission just to be allowed to kiss those small, gilt shoes.

Unaware of the tumult raging in the shrubbery near, Hilary came on, out of the open window, and crossing the terrace leant against the low stone wall that edged it, her arms on the parapet, her gaze across the sea, her face wistful and dreamy.

As the boy watched he felt all on fire; a fire that the thought of the cool, white, scented arm he had held only increased.

For some minutes Hilary stayed as if lost in dreams. Then she went back to the ballroom.

He knelt on the spot where she had stood; pressed his young strength against the wall on which she had leant, in a vain effort to try and cool the sudden fever that raged within him. And until his lips bled he kissed the spot where her arms had rested.

The next morning when Hilary awoke she found she had not escaped unscathed. Her right arm was stiff and a trifle swollen, and she felt unable to manage the drive out to the Chaines des Maures. After yesterday’s affair with the scorpion Paul might think she was ill if she did not turn up as usual, and he would be sure to worry. She must let him know she was all right, for she could not have him troubled in any way.

If she sent a wire from the hotel to the Marquis of Rochefallain in his rebel stronghold, the whole place would be talking about it, and goodness knows how far the gossip would spread.

By now Hilary knew Yvonne Morelli was the girl Paul’s guardians wanted him to marry. The mere idea filled her with indignation. The boy would be absolutely miserable tied to that ill-bred, empty-headed creature.

Finally Hilary decided to send a wire from the General Post Office. Even if Paul were known there, she would not be.

With this end in view, after breakfast she dressed for walking, in a pretty, knitted silk costume of one of the yellow shades she nearly always wore, with a little pull-on hat to match. At that moment, Dakin, her maid, was in bed with a severe chill. But from early days the girl had learnt to be independent, and the fact of having to attend to herself for a few days was no hardship.

After dispatching the telegram Hilary made a round of the shops, looking for the special frock she wanted, but saw nothing that really pleased her. Then, as it was the cocktail hour, she made for a fashionable café on the promenade.

On reaching there, however, she did not order a cocktail. During the last fortnight these things had lost their flavor. Instead, she ordered an ice.

“I’ve wrenched my arm a bit,” Hilary replied, not wanting to go into explanations, “and don’t feel equal to driving.”

“I love exploring,” Hilary answered. “The country round is so beautiful.”

Yvonne would have liked to have said that she saw nothing beautiful in scorching along a hot, dusty road at fifty miles an hour.

Instead, she glanced at Hilary’s slim, capable hands and turned the conversation.

“I see you’re wearing the ring my brother bought. I thought you wanted it for your mother.”

“I don’t care for things other people have worn,” Yvonne said in a superior tone.

“Are you doing anything in particular this afternoon?” she asked presently. “If not I should be so pleased if you would come along with us to the ‘the dansant’ at the Abassadeurs. Louis will be delighted to see you there.”

“Are you? One of our cars is going there, doing some shopping for my mother. I should be delighted to send it round for you,” Yvonne said promptly.

“I shall be glad of a lift. The trains are so inconvenient. I want a new frock, and I haven’t seen anything I like here. I may have better luck in Nice.”

“Any time after lunch. Do sit down and have an ice—or a cocktail,” Hilary added.

The French girl refused, pleading haste. To-day, at least, this sly yellow cat would not be with the marquis.

Paul did not know how he got back to his cottage. Dazed he rode through the blue mist of the night, and the cool white stars looked down at him with mockery. For now Hilary seemed as far beyond his reach as they.

Into the love that surged like a wild, hot flood through him, had come a cold, hard fact; a fact that no amount of love and longing could melt or sweep away.

An eternity before he could hold all that cool whiteness on his burning heart. Closer and closer, until they forgot each other and love melted them into one.

A life little better than that of a peasant. A round of constant grind and poverty. Of scraping and screwing and pinching to make both ends meet.

He could never have her. She was still Rêve d’Or. Fated always to be a misty, mocking vision.

It never occurred to Paul that Hilary might have money; in his craving for her he had forgotten everything but herself and his own poverty. He made his way through the night, his face haggard and twisted and torn with the agony of desire that raged within him.

When the cottage was reached, worn out with the long ride and his own emotions he flung himself down on the heap of straw. But not to sleep, in spite of exhaustion. In at the open window came night with all its seductive whispers, and a light wind touching him, cool and soft as her arm and as faintly violet scented.

Never to hold her on his heart. His golden dream! Never to whisper how he loved her. Never to kiss that alabaster skin. Never to caress that sweet, boyish face, that sleek, smooth, golden head. Never to taste the sweetness of those lips. Never to crush that slender beauty on his strength. Never to feel that slim form trembling against his in an ecstasy of desire.

She liked him or she would not come daily to his cottage. The men of his name had always been good lovers. He might persuade her into waiting. Marry her the moment he was of age.

Long years of hardship. Of poverty, pain and children. A poverty that would gradually wrench them apart in spite of all his love.

Through a morass of passion and desire the boy fought his way back to the firm ground of true love, worn and breathless with this further battle.

How the night mocked him with its whispers! And the faint sweet scent of the violets!

In a delirium of hopeless love Paul got to his feet and left the hovel. Staggering out into the cool mockery of the night he flung himself face downwards among the violets. He dug his hands deep into the mould, so cool and soft and fragrant, and pressing his face close on the scented earth, wept with the agony of desire that raged within him.

When the sun rose upon the peaks and crags of Rochefallain, reddening the sky and striking fire from the castle windows, Paul was standing waist deep in the stone reservoir of his garden, trying to get rid of some of the marks of his night’s agony. As he plunged his aching head again and again into the cool water, the sun made diamonds of the drops on his brown shoulders, and a rainbow of the shower dripping from his tousled hair.

He saw nothing of the beauty of the morning, of the flood of green and gold and red and mauve in which day was rapidly drowning night. He saw only, far off and quite beyond his reach, his golden dream. And it seemed to him he had loved and lost in a very few hours, and the fact had left him old and weary.

In a listless manner he dried on a rag of a towel, and then got into his tattered clothes.

Taking a jug he climbed down a trio of terraces to where a little spring gushed out of a mossy green wall; a cool, cave-like hollow draped with maiden hair ferns.

A drink of cold water and a slice of dry bread was his usual breakfast. But now, although he drank thirstily of the water, he forgot the bread.

Like an old man he moved about his holding, glad of tasks that must be done. But how time dragged! Occasionally he glanced at the sun, his only timepiece, and it seemed that the day stood still.

Getting a lettuce he washed it at the spring. Putting the discarded slice of breakfast bread on a thick yellow plate, he shredded the green stuff on it, and sprinkled it with olive oil, salt and lemon juice. Then he took it together with a handful of dried figs, and a small glass of thin pink wine to the bench under the cherry tree.

It was not Hilary. He would have heard her car. Besides she always heralded her coming with three sharp blasts of the horn on turning the corner of the lane. Three blasts that for the last fortnight had always sent him eagerly through the mimosa grove and out on to the road to meet her.

Letters rarely came his way, and the few that did were abusive ones from his guardians.

He was an anachronism. Left over from the days when men fought their way to fortune with courage and swords. No use at all in the present day world. Just as well if his name did die out. The Morellis were the only sort that prospered nowadays.

“Arm a bit stiff. Cannot come to-day. Will come to-morrow afternoon as usual. Nothing to worry about. Hilary.”

The mere sight of her name set his heart bleeding afresh, and made him almost sick with longing. Yet he was conscious of a feeling of relief at the respite. To-day he could not have faced her. Not in a normal manner. To-morrow, and until she left for England, she could be Hilary, his boy-friend. He would never let her know he had discovered her secret.

Another row! There was always a right royal one nowadays when they met. And he didn’t feel equal to it. He was too torn and tormented.

He heard the car stop. But he went on sowing his seeds, his back carefully turned towards the little gate. Then he heard a voice that made him spin round in utter astonishment—an affected, purring voice.

Without waiting for any invitation Yvonne came in through the little gate. Paul just stared at her, wondering why on earth Yvonne Morelli had come to see him, thinking her nerve colossal, and thinking also that life wouldn’t be worth living if she started to haunt his refuge.

“I wonder if you really know who Miss Fane is?” she asked, rolling her eyes at him.

Her question was the last the young man expected. Something in her tone of voice made him realize, for the first time, how little he knew about Hilary. For all that, he had no intention of talking about the girl he loved to this painted, ogling creature.

“She may say she’s the daughter of an English baronet with a fortune of her own,” Yvonne said a trifle breathlessly. “But I know better. She’s an English actress my brother picked up in Paris and brought down here. He gave her that little silver car and pays her hotel bills. I expect you know what that means.”

Paul suddenly stumbled into a quicksand of doubt that rapidly sucked him deeper and deeper.

“Young men are so often fooled by that type of woman. I didn’t even know she knew you until Louis told me. He said she was making fun of you because you were so raw and ignorant. It was a proper joke between them. I was so angry. I couldn’t bear to think of you being the sport of a low creature like her. I had to come and tell you.”

Triumphant that he had not contradicted her first statement Yvonne went on. That her victory might be short-lived she did not pause to consider. Her only desire was to sow such seeds of doubt in Paul’s unsophisticated mind that even Hilary’s credentials might not be able to kill them. Knowing his haughty nature, and that he was absolutely ignorant of the ways of the modern world, Yvonne hoped that because of her statements, he would quickly and quietly drop Hilary without troubling to explain the reason of his behavior.

“Look at this,” she went on, thrusting a sheet of paper into his nerveless hand.

It was a receipt from a well-known firm of jewelers in Toulon for an antique emerald ring priced at fifty thousand francs. And the name of the customer was Louis Morelli.

“I found that receipt,” Yvonne’s voice went on, now full of virtuous indignation. “Louis did not give me that ring, nor did he give it to my mother, so I determined to find out what he had done with it. Only this morning I saw that actress creature in a café, and she was flaunting it, making my brother the talk of Cannes.”

Unfortunately Paul had seen a ring similar to the one described in the receipt on Hilary’s finger, the one touch of color in a vision of gold and alabaster.

There was no one to tell him that Hilary’s check for that amount was now in Morelli’s possession. There was nothing to contradict Yvonne’s statements, and something to bear them out.

Paul started to wrestle with devils, and during the process he put what he considered two and two together.

He suddenly realized that he knew nothing at all about Hilary except what she had been pleased to tell him, which, now that he came to think about it, amounted to very little.

Paul recollected there had been no one else of the name of Fane in the visitors’ list. The names had been put in alphabetical order, and as ill luck would have it Hilary’s name came right away from that of any other English person. He remembered noticing this. At the time that “Miss Hilary Fane, England” had set her apart, shining like a star above the world. Now, in the light of Yvonne’s revelations, it ostracized her.

No respectable girl would career over the country alone, in a motor, going unchaperoned into cafés, drinking and smoking and getting mixed up in low brawls. In his fevered imagination this was what the affair in the Café des Maures now looked like.

No respectable girl would go about in boy’s clothes, picking up any man she fancied, visiting him in his house unattended. For this was now how Paul looked upon their friendship.

He suddenly judged Hilary by South Latin standards, which, in his love for the friend who had grown so dear to him during the last fortnight, he had quite forgotten. His mind poisoned by Yvonne’s lies now, in desperate pain, he was wondering why he was so stupid as not to have guessed what sort of a girl she really was.

Only too clearly Paul now saw how Hilary had turned him inside out, in the light of Yvonne’s revelations it seemed for the amusement of her wealthy paramour.

He had believed in her. Trusted her! Loved her! Told her his innermost thoughts. The secrets of his heart.

He writhed in mental anguish as he saw his raw young soul being dangled by Hilary before Morelli for the latter’s diversion.

He went all cold, frozen, at the thought of his own incredulous folly. A pain keener than his love agony tore at his being, a bitterness so great that his blood seemed to turn to gall in his veins.

Hardly knowing what he did, he handed the receipt back; his only conscious thought to keep Yvonne from guessing the pain that raged within him.

“You needn’t have troubled to come and tell me this,” he said. “Miss Fane never made any mystery about herself.”

As if from a long way off he heard himself speaking, and his voice sounded very flat in his ears.

She did not know whether her seed had fallen on barren ground or not. The young man’s face told her nothing. He was looking at her straightly, with a glint of contempt in his eyes—a look she knew.

“I wanted to save you if I could,” she said hurriedly. “I know you have very little knowledge of the world and women.”

This Paul was realizing to the fullest, and her remark fell like a red hot cinder in his sensitive soul.

“It was thoughtful of you, but not at all necessary in my case,” he answered coldly.

As he talked he edged her towards the gate. He wanted her gone. At once. Before the flood of this new agony swamped him.

Whether she had spoilt that sly yellow cat’s game or not, Yvonne did not know. At least she had the satisfaction of knowing she had done her best.

Like a demented thing he paced the garden, his hands clenched, his face twisted, his eyes dark pools of pain and anger, raging at the thought of his own folly and Hilary’s deception.

Finally he came to a halt under the cherry tree. There he sat staring straight ahead, brooding.

And as he brooded something strange and wild burst into being within him, born of bitterness and passion, a heritage from those dim Saracen forebears.

The following afternoon in a joyous mood Hilary set out to keep her tryst. As she drove along she pictured a scene three days ahead—a day that for Paul was to be one of revelation.

She would not be wearing boy’s clothes then, but a little frock of white muslin embroidered all over, with tiny sleeves and a soft yellow ribbon running through slots somewhere below the waist; an expensive, dainty, feminine trifle, bought in Nice, and now being altered to suit her requirements. Over it she would wear a masculine coat, so that when the car drew up Paul could not see the surprise in store for him.

Three blasts of the horn. And she would see him as she turned the corner, in his blue rags, at the gap of the low wall round the mimosa grove.

And he would open the door of the car as he always did, as if he were so lonely and wanted his friend so badly that he could not wait one moment.

Out she would hop. Long slim legs in silk stockings, and little shoes with high heels. Before he had recovered from that shock she would throw off the coat and tee-to-tum round slowly in front of him.

He would not reply. He would be just dumbfounded. He would stare for a moment with those brown velvet eyes of his and then look away quickly, very shy, very confused, remembering their many intimate talks, all about things he would never have mentioned before a girl.

“Say you don’t mind,” she would go on. “I never really wanted to be a girl. It’s my misfortune, not my fault. So don’t you start rubbing it in by refusing to be friends with me any more. Say you don’t mind. Quickly, Paul. Don’t make me feel a forward minx.”

“Hilary,” he would repeat, in his nervousness stumbling over her name, saying, “Ilaree,” as he used to before she trained him out of it.

Then he would go right back into the furthermost depths of his shell, wishing her gone so that he might collect himself together and have time to dwell on the metamorphosis.

He would be such a humble lover. He would never think of his own beauty, strength and cleanness. He would only remember he was poor, a beggar almost.

She would drag him out and over the barrier of her wealth. And when she got him safely into her parlor she would make so much of him that he would want to stay, her money forgotten in his desire for herself.

Darling, innocent Paul! At her feet, so humble, so anxious a lover, begging, entreating her to marry him, pleading and imploring her to do what she had wanted to do ever since she first saw him!

When the corner of the lane came into view, Hilary wiped the soft dreamy look from her face and put on a cheeky, boyish one.

There he was at the gap in the mimosa grove, waiting for her as usual. In his shabby old black and white suit, his hair plastered back. That meant he had finished his work and wanted to go for a drive.

She got out, peeling off brown leather driving gloves from small capable hands that were now always kept a trifle murky for deception’s sake, and glanced up at him, thinking how unusually tired he looked.

“So as to have this afternoon all free for me,” she said, smiling up at him.

In her frank smile and her friendliness Paul now fell into the common error of the inexperienced ones among his sex. He thought her bold and forward, the sort of woman any man can make free with.

In a slightly forced manner, he smiled back at her, hiding the bitterness, the passion, the mad desire that raged within him.

Rêve d’Or was dead. Poisoned by Yvonne. Her lovely smiling shell stood before him. Hilary, the wanton. Morelli’s mistress.

For the first time in his white young life Paul started lying, lying because of some insistent force within him, something that could not be quelled until he had held all this cool, fair beauty on his heart.

“I’m expecting my uncle,” he said. “And I want to clear out before he comes. I’d arranged for us to have dinner here, but when I heard of his visit I carted the stuff over to the castle. I hope you don’t mind feeding there. I don’t feel equal to a row with the old devil.”

“You know I love prowling about in your old place. But let’s get off before the storm comes.”

Part of her speech, if possible, increased the bitterness in the boy’s heart. She wanted his castle too, this lovely little coquette. Would have bought it with Morelli’s money. Then that hated tribe would have had everything that was his.

With the wild, black flood damned up within him Paul entered the car and took the steering wheel: once they were clear of the lane going at more than his usual speed, taking the hairpin turns in a way that made even Hilary catch her breath.

She liked to watch him driving. Generally there was such a look of perfect bliss on his face. But, to-day, he sat at the wheel with a grim, set expression which she put down to Count Naudin.

She would not have him badgered by his odious relations. His guardian in chief was at present in Monte Carlo—Hilary had seen both name and address in the visitors’ list. She would write to Count Naudin and ask him to come and see her. She would write that very night when she got back. She would be the most modern of modern maidens. She would put her income, prospects and pedigree before Paul’s uncle, letting the count see she was in every way eligible. Then she would tell him to keep clear of the cottage and leave her to manage the rebel.

“Don’t let your uncle spoil your afternoon, Paul,” she said presently, as his moodiness did not vanish with the exhilaration of the drive. “Put him right out of your mind.”

Now that she was with him his wild desire for her swamped all else. Yet had he been in a position to marry her he would not have done so. His haughty spirit would have been up in arms at the bare idea.

Her job was to make sport or profit out of men, not to bear heirs to the oldest name in France.

Paul had his plans all laid. What he wanted so madly he intended to take at once and pay for afterwards.

When he came of age he would make his guardians account for every sou of the accumulated money. He had meant to spend most of it in an effort to retrieve his fortunes, single-handed, by fruit farming on a large scale in Natal. Now, he intended to hand it over in a lump sum to Hilary. Poor as he was, he could afford to pay for the one woman he fancied.

Unaware of what was passing in the young man’s mind Hilary gave herself up to the pleasure of his company.

By mutual agreement they headed for a little spot on the coast: a place where the pines marched down to the sea and looked at their own reflections in the water. A tiny bay wrapped in sunshine, with sparkling golden sand and incense-ladened air.

Hilary always enjoyed those meals. She loved watching Paul put butter thick on the white rolls and stack jam on the top; a precarious pile that he managed most skilfully and ate with schoolboy gusto, all the time watching her with affection and gratitude. Since his rebellion and until her advent, neither white rolls nor butter nor jam had come his way.

Then would follow cigarettes, smoked as they both sprawled on low wicker chairs, hands deep in pockets, legs straight out in front of them, talking and admiring the view. Afterwards followed a row on the placid water of the bay, Paul doing the work. He would strip off his coat, roll up his sleeves, bringing to light those smooth, rippling muscles she loved, and talk and scold her as he rowed out into the blue.

To-day they went through the usual program, except that Paul did not seem to want his meal, did not juggle with rolls and jam, and once in the boat was unusually silent, not urging Hilary, as he generally did, to strip off coat, roll up sleeves, and take a turn at the oars. Or saying Hilary was an idle little devil always calmly appropriating the rudder, and dangling over it, cigarette between lips, letting him, Paul, do all the work. No wonder he, Hilary, was such a hopeless weed, if that was the way he had been brought up.

To-day she was too full of her own thoughts to miss his playful scoldings, planning the letter she would write to Count Naudin, putting little mental touches to the garb that was to be worn for her first appearance in Paul’s sight as a girl.

The sun was well on the decline when they started their journey again. And the first cool touch of evening was in the air as they drove up the deserted approach to the castle. The way led through forests to broken iron gates set in thick old walls. Not once a month did anyone go near the place. It stood quite alone, the deep drop into the valley on one side, on the other, acres and acres of pine, cork and chestnut trees.

On reaching the castle Paul stopped the car by the door through which Hilary had first entered. Although she got out, he did not.

“The door is unfastened,” he said. “Get along in. I’ll run the car round to the back and give it a drink. It’ll need it before you get back.”

Paul ran the car round to the deserted courtyard. But he did not put any water in it. Instead, he ran it into the open door of a garage, and locking it up, slipped the key into his pocket.

In the great, dim hall Hilary was waiting for him, slim and white among the shadows.

By now she knew which that was; the one in the tower, with a door that led on to the battlements and gave a wide view of his estate.

She did not hurry, as with him she made her way towards the tower, but lingered in long, dim, rainbow-tinted corridors where ancient suits of armor watched her through their visors in a friendly way, as if rejoicing that she was there. She peeped into great, spider-hung rooms, where shadows greeted her softly, and little whispering draughts fell on her ears, like ghost voices giving her welcome. Slowly she went up stone steps, fitting her feet into grooves worn by generations of Paul’s ancestors, planning all she would do when the old place was hers. Thinking also of those three sons, hers and Paul’s, who would bring sturdy life and boyish mirth into rooms peopled now only with silence and shadows.

On a piece of white American cloth were laid two large, coarse yellow plates. By the side of each was a steel fork, a bone-handled knife and a thick, dumpy tumbler. In the middle stood a stone jar of flowers—mimosa this time. Then, in a row, came a boiled fowl, a bowl of salad, a saucer of olives, half a long loaf of greyish bread, some hard boiled eggs, and a jar of honey. The bureau had been set out as a sideboard. There stood a bottle of Paul’s best vintage, and two tin plates, one piled high with dried figs, raisins and almonds, the other with oranges.

There was something new that Hilary spied at once, for by now she knew every one of Paul’s meager possessions—a cheap little spirit stove, a pan, a tin of coffee, and a small pile of flat slabs of sugar.

“Coffee!” she exclaimed. “What next? I shan’t come again if you squander your hard-earned money on me in this reckless manner.”

Avoiding her gaze he drew the chairs up to the table and set about carving the chicken, as usual putting all the choicest bits on her plate.

To Hilary there was a rare joy about those picnic meals, prodding with one’s fork into a common bowl of salad, often with closed eyes and bets on as to who got the first radish or the heart of the lettuce. To-night Paul was not himself. Conversation seemed an effort to him. Frequently he lapsed into brooding silence, and she still blamed Count Naudin.

When the meal was finished and coffee brewed, they sat sipping the drink from glasses, and smoking.

Hilary watched a certain shadow on the wall. When that reached the head of John the Baptist in the Salome fresco she must go.

As she watched, a sudden harsh gust of wind set the forests roaring. Hilary thought it was the mistral, the dread wind which at times sweeps down like a tornado from the Alps, a terrible gale that seems to take buildings in giant hands and shake them in a wild fury of mad anger, as if its only desire were to tear them to pieces. She had dealt with it once, and it had left her wondering how long it would be before she and her car were lifted bodily and tossed over some precipice.

Her words brought Paul out of some black study. Lifting his head he listened with ears attuned to all the sounds of his mountains.

Like a sudden gust of passion the roar died away as unexpectedly as it had arisen, leaving the queer sort of breathless silence behind it that follows havoc and destruction.

Presently, in the grounds beneath, the frogs commenced their even-song, and away in the forests the young owls started calling, mewing plaintively like kittens.

Night came early in that high, vaulted room. Already dusk was gathering within the frescoed walls; a dusk illuminated by the last bright tints of an unseen sunset that floated in at the high, barred windows in soft clouds—orange and red, vague pink and burning gold.

Hilary watched the shadow creep along the painted wall. All too soon it touched the charger, then the head of John the Baptist.

She must leave this dear old place and the boy who was such a part of it, and go back to that noisy, vulgar crowd.

With this end in view she got up. Paul rose also, and put a hand on her shoulder.

The action was one Hilary was used to now, and she always wanted to rub her cheek against the slim brown hand that touched her with such friendliness and affection.

Hilary was too amazed to notice the tense trembling of the hand on her shoulder, or the queer new note in his voice.

The tables were indeed turned! She had intended to surprise him, and he had succeeded in surprising her.

He made no reply, but stood looking at her with dark, somber eyes where strange, wild fires flickered.

Paul had not taken it coolly. He had been through two separate hells since his discovery, and was now wallowing in a third. First, hopeless love. Then, unspeakable bitterness. Now, he was one welter of wild passion and mad desire.

“Well, that’s that,” Hilary went on. “And I’ve wasted good money on a new frock for your special benefit. You’ll let us still be friends, won’t you?” she finished, stretching out her hand.

He took it, holding it clasped tight in both of his—a trembling, feverish grip.

Hilary experienced a disappointed feeling. The ground was being cut away from beneath her feet. Paul was coming to the point much more quickly than she had anticipated. He was not going to be the humble suitor she had pictured. She would not have to do the spider to his fly. In fact it looked rather the other way about.

Drawing her hand away quickly, she turned towards the door, her principal thought now to be gone, to get right away from this strange, new, uncomfortable feeling that had invaded the room.

She could not credit her eyes or her ears. In every way he was acting contrary to her estimate of him.

But he did not open it. Instead, he hung the key high up on a nail at his fullest stretch, well beyond her reach.

Still he did not open it. He turned towards her, with outstretched arms, as if he would snatch her to his heart.

With a quick movement Hilary avoided him, putting the length of the table between them.

There was a little wail in her voice, for it seemed her god’s feet were only clay.

“Whatever has happened is your fault,” he said, his voice shaking with the fury of the storm that raged within him.

From outside came the measured sigh of trees as the rising night wind stirred them. Inside, the room seemed to echo with the throb of her startled heart and the sound of the boy’s labored breathing. His hands were clenched, his chest heaving wildly, his whole body trembled as he watched her with eyes that were dark, flaming pools of passion.

Paul had worked himself up to such a pitch that there was neither reason nor understanding left in him. Only passion. An untouched flood. A burning, mad desire for the cool, fair, golden beauty of the girl.

She could have wept with soul pain. She was not Circe. She did not turn men into beasts. Yet this seemed to be the effect she had had on the boy she loved.

This was Paul. Her Paul. This great, hungry, passion-racked creature, watching her with those strange wild eyes from among the gathering shadows. Paul, whom she loved. Who at all costs must be kept from sin.

Across the table, where the mimosa dripped its golden tears, she faced him, white and anxious.

“You must have a little patience,” she said, her voice broken and trembling. “If you really love me, I’m quite willing to marry you.”

At her words a touch of hauteur came to tinge the passion on his face. Even in his madness Paul had not forgotten who he was, and that she was Morelli’s mistress.

She retreated. Back to the wall. And stood there with arms outstretched to keep him at bay.

He followed, and taking her hands held them pressed tight in his, saying nothing, but just watching her in that strange, wild, hungry manner.

“Oh, Paul, don’t. It isn’t right,” she pleaded, pride now forgotten in her desire to save him.

It is one thing to want to marry a man, but quite another for him to set out to steal all one is prepared to give. This Hilary was realizing on a rapidly rising wave of horror.

She was no lipstick coquette after cheap sensation. But a high-minded, generous girl, very much in love with the man of her choice, and anxious to keep him up to his highest level.

She had never dealt with passion before. Now it faced her. Watching her with somber, burning eyes.

She had seen him fight Le Taureau, and knew it would be no use struggling. If words could not bring him to reason, she would be swamped by this horrible flood.

In Paul’s inflamed mind she was keeping him at bay because he had not paid cash down.

“You needn’t think I’m after something for nothing,” he said thickly. “There’ll be a nice little check for you the day I am of age.”

Then because words were her only defense, she started talking in a breathless way, trying to make him see there must be some mistake, saying who and what she was, repeating her willingness to marry him, if only he would have patience.

Hilary did not know her Paul as well as she had imagined. Never before had she had to deal with what his brothers used to call the “fixed idea.” As far as she was concerned Paul had made up his mind. She might have talked until Doomsday but, in his present mood, nothing would have convinced him she was not Morelli’s mistress, and, as such, equally the mistress of any man who could afford to buy her.

Then, because her idol was shattered she began to cry, slowly and silently, one crystal drop after another out of clear, innocent eyes; unconscious tears wrung from the agony of her broken heart.

Morning came late in the vaulted rooms of the tower, creeping in reluctantly long after the rest of the world was awake. Late as it was, it found one person still asleep on the divan.

It was the first sleep Paul had had for two nights. Now, he slept like a worn-out child, his head pillowed on Hilary’s heart, an arm across her.

There had been no sleep for her that night. For hours she had lain conscious of his head on her heart, his arm around her. An arm that the least movement of hers tightened, as though even in slumber he was aware of possession.

To Hilary, Paul was dead now. With his own hand he had torn down the altar to himself she had set up in her heart. He had committed sacrilege, trampling like a beast in sacred places. He had fallen so low that even love could not pick him out of the mire and cleanse him.

Weary eyes, dark-ringed and tragic, watched the quiet sleeper. It was hard to believe he was the passion-racked being she had dealt with through the long hours of the night.

She must get back to Cannes. Account for her night’s absence by saying she had had a breakdown. No one must ever know what had happened. As soon as possible she must get back to England, and try and forget all about him.

But Hilary knew she would never forget. She had loved too deeply. The shadow of his image would always haunt the empty void of her heart.

Her movement, slight as it was, made the boy’s arm tighten. With hands that were drained of all strength, she tried to peel off the detaining arm. Her touch roused him. His eyes opened. For a moment he looked at her in a dazed manner, smiling in the trustful, affectionate way he used to in the days before the fall.

Then his expression changed. Trust and affection were drowned in a further gush of passion.

He drew himself up and leaned over her, rubbing his cheek lightly against her lips.

In a weary manner she moved her head away, but there was no escaping from the arms that held her.

After he left the divan she stayed with her face turned towards the wall, conscious of his every movement.

“Don’t be too angry, Carissima,” he said. “I really shall pay the moment I’m of age.”

Like a dead thing she lay, ignoring him completely, her only wish that he would go, so that she could get away and out of his life forever.

Presently she heard the heavy door close behind him. For some minutes she waited, until quite sure he was out of the way. Then, wearily, she got to her feet.

Intent on escape she did not notice the little room had been tidied, the table appointments straightened, and that among the débris of the previous night’s meal, a glass of fresh coffee steamed.

Hardly able to credit her senses she pulled it again and again. Then she noticed the key was missing from the nail on the wall.

She flew to the door leading out on the battlements. That was locked also, and the key was gone. In a frantic, incredulous manner she made towards the one leading into the second of the apartments: another frescoed, vaulted room, that hitherto had been empty.

The sight left her petrified. It told her Paul’s behavior had been premeditated; that he had deliberately set out to trap her. And it seemed to Hilary that the discovery of her sex had deprived him of his senses.

Then she recollected that weeks might pass without anyone coming near the castle. Months without anyone entering it. The whole district might be searched, but no one would ever dream of looking for her here. No one even knew of her acquaintance with its owner. For weeks she might be kept shut up.

A cold, sick, hopeless feeling seized her. All strength vanished. It seemed Paul had gone quite mad, that she was at the mercy of some lunatic.

She dragged herself back to the divan, and sat there trying to collect her scattered wits together.

“Mr. Selby rang up a few minutes ago, sir. He said he wanted to speak to you the moment you came in.”

Giving his hat and stick to the servant, Morelli turned into a little room, and rang up the hotel where the Selbys were staying.

“We didn’t know a thing about it until half an hour ago. Hilary wasn’t in for dinner, but then she often isn’t. This morning, as she hadn’t rung for her breakfast, the chambermaid went in to see if she were ill or anything. Bed never slept in and all that sort of thing. My mater is off her head. So is Dakin, that’s Hilary’s maid. Got off a bed of sickness when she heard her mistress was missing. Fair off her head she is too. All about nothing, I say. I expect Hilary has had a breakdown somewhere.”

“If that were the case I’m sure she would find some way of letting you know.”

“Look here, old chap, don’t you start scenting a tragedy too,” Selby’s voice said plaintively. “That’s word for word what Dakin said. But I’m sure Hilary will come limping in before the day is out.”

Every police station in the district had been telephoned to, yet no trace had been found of the missing girl or her car.

Two more days passed without a clue, and the affair was more of a mystery than ever.

It appeared that on the afternoon of her disappearance the girl had had tea with a young man at an inn on the coast; a young man she had been there with several times before.

She felt her seed had fallen on barren ground, and hoped her rival was lying dead at the bottom of some mountain gorge.

Considering Hilary’s friendship with the marquis it was strange he had made no inquiries about her. But, living as a recluse, he might never have seen a paper, or even known she had vanished. If he had been with her on the afternoon of her disappearance he ought to have some idea of her movements and where she was heading for when they parted company.

Morelli’s opinion of the mystery was that Hilary had had an accident and was now lying unconscious, or too ill to give any account of herself, in some peasant’s cottage where the news of her disappearance had not yet penetrated.

Later on in the day, determined to leave no stone unturned, he set out for Paul’s stronghold, snoring up the hills in his big racing car.

Paul heard the car some time before it halted outside of his cottage. Its noise echoed and re-echoed among the silent crags and pine-clad heights.

Since Yvonne’s visit the image of Louis Morelli had lurked at the back of his inflamed mind. Although his wild passion was slaked a little, desire had grown with possession. If Morelli thought he was going to take Hilary away from him, he would soon learn differently.

In his madness the young man had reverted to the time when the Laurients possessed not only the land, but the people also, and could take and keep any woman they fancied.

Paul was in his cottage kitchen when Louis reached the place. Although he heard the footsteps he did not turn until his visitor tapped on the open door.

Morelli was well aware that the young marquis disliked him and all his family, but he was not prepared for the savage look of blazing fury which was turned on him.

“I do,” Paul replied from across his kitchen. “But I don’t see that it’s any business of yours.”

From his pocket he drew out a newspaper, and took a step or two forward into the inhospitable atmosphere of the little room.

The words leapt out at him, bringing him crashing down from the past to the present, a fall through the centuries that cleared his head.

This was something quite different from Yvonne Morelli’s version. In a case of this sort the newspaper would give facts, not fiction.

Then, for the first time, it occurred to Paul that one should not judge an English girl by French standards.

Every statement regarding who and what the girl was he had heard before, gasped out from Hilary’s white lips that first night in the tower. Statements that he, in his mad passion and stupidity, would not believe.

In a blank, bewildered way he stood looking at the paper, his face white beneath a swarthy film.

In his voice was a helpless, piteous note, like a child that for the first time has found the world out in some monstrous lie. For life had not yet shown Paul that most people can be desperate liars.

Yvonne Morelli, whose infatuation for himself had made her the talk of the district.

Had she been there Paul would have killed her. He would have taken her plump neck between his two hands, choked the life out of her, and felt better for it.

What a fool he was! A mad, gullible fool. Fooled by the jealous, painted creature. Fooled into——!

A wave of dire agony seemed to wrench his heart asunder. He bit his lip to keep back a cry of mortal pain.

As Paul stood silently wrestling with new devils Morelli considered him afresh, noting his haggard face, his burning eyes, his strained expression, his parched lips.

Did the boy know something about the girl? Was there more in the case than met the eye? Had he proposed and been refused?

Knowing nothing of English girls, he might have mistaken Hilary’s friendship for more than it really was. Might have thought she was trifling with him. If that were the case, considering the boy’s fiery untouched nature, there might be the very devil to pay.

He would be equal to anything, this haughty young lord of the hills, if those banked fires suddenly broke out.

“What were you told?” Morelli asked sharply, referring to Paul’s unfinished sentence.

The boy did not reply. He was still staring at the paragraph. It was not the paragraph he saw, but Hilary.

Hilary with her back against the frescoed wall, looking up at him with horror on her face, and tears, like diamonds, oozing slowly from her eyes.

Pleadings and entreaties he had pressed back into her mouth with long, hungry kisses.

Hilary, so white and weary, with dark-ringed eyes and hands that had no strength left in them, still trying to keep him at bay.

Rêve d’Or who had trusted him, loved him, would have married him. She had been the victim of his wild passion.

He ought to have been on his knees before her, in awe that he had been permitted to enter the sanctuary of her heart, and with careful hands tended the pure white flame of her love that burnt there.

At the knowledge of his own ghastly behavior it seemed to Paul that he could not endure the pain that tore at his heart, that he must cry aloud in his agony. But there was Morelli watching, watching him with keen, suspicious eyes.

Into his torment Morelli’s voice penetrated again, this time with sharp insistence.

In spite of the dire anguish that racked him Paul tried to pull himself together. But his wits seemed to have flown. Much as he grasped after them he could not catch them. Yet catch them he must. There was Hilary to consider. Hilary, whom he had so foully wronged. For her sake no one must ever know what had really happened.

To screen her he would lie until his tongue shriveled within his mouth. He must pull himself together. A battle for her honor. Against the world. Against Morelli who suspected.

Paul kept his eyes on the paper, but he was not reading. He was avoiding Morelli’s searching gaze. Watching his own hand with a sort of horrible fascination. Watching to see how long before it started shaking. Trembling with this last and most torturing storm that raged within him. Trembling, and condemning him.

“I insist on hearing what you were told. Miss Fane is a lady I have a great respect for. And I intend to do all I can to find her.”

Paul looked up, with level gaze meeting Morelli’s steely glance—a silent duel for Hilary’s honor.

In spite of all efforts that lie stuck in Paul’s throat. Morelli noticed the break in the boy’s voice, also that he was very white beneath his swarthiness. Something in the youngster’s measured, watchful glance and the tense atmosphere of the little room suggested he was fencing; that he knew more than he said.

Morelli kept his eyes on his rival, a close, searching gaze. Breathless Paul waited, wondering what question would be hurled at him next.

At the direct query Paul’s heart gave a sickly throb, but he had his answer ready.

“I wish I knew,” he said with a tremor. “She must have gone straight back to England when she left me.”

“Without a word to her friends! You can’t know her as well as I do. She’d never do a trick like that.”

The cross examination went on, Morelli all the time trying to get beneath the boy’s guard, to catch him in slip or contradiction. But Paul’s mind was now sharp and clear as a steel blade. His answer was always ready.

As the duel went on, Morelli began to wonder why he should have suspected the marquis when the young man’s virtue and integrity were a byword, and he put his suspicions down to his own anxiety about Hilary.

Finally Louis withdrew, deciding that his original theory was the right one, and that Paul’s haggard appearance was due to the fact that the girl had refused him, a circumstance which would account for her saying she was returning to England.

When Morelli left, Paul’s only conscious thought was to get to Hilary. What he was going to say and do when he got there he did not know. He only knew that somehow her honor must be saved.

For Hilary the days of her imprisonment passed like some slow, wild nightmare. Every lagging, leaden hour made an excuse for her absence more difficult to find.

Her jailor left each morning soon after day invaded her prison, and returned each evening with the dusk, bringing a fresh supply of food and water. When he came he said very little, but he eyed her in a resentful manner. In Paul’s fevered mind he accused her of giving herself freely to Morelli, yet she always tried to keep him at bay.

Hilary ignored him completely, only coming to life when he touched her. Although she struggled she knew her efforts were hopeless. She could no more have stopped that wild flood than she could have stemmed a stream of molten lava. Yet there was always a drug in his arms, his voice, his kisses, something that soothed her in spite of herself.

When he was not there she wept over the grave of her dead lover, and spent her time in trying to escape. A way had suggested itself, a memory from childhood’s days when she had devoured her brothers’ fiction. By removing an iron bar from one of the slit windows and climbing down the ivy.

When Paul left in the morning she waited until quite sure he was out of the way. Then she pulled the table up to the wall, dismantled the washstand and lifted that on to it. On this two chairs were placed, one on the other, a precarious pile that enabled her to reach the high window.

Mounted on the top, with a steel pronged fork she pried at the cement holding the iron bar in position. It was slow work. A week at least would pass before she could get even one end loose.

And people out looking for her, wondering what had happened. Too long for her to give any feasible excuse for her absence.

The truth would have to be told. Then she would be tarred with the brush that had touched so many women of the set she now moved in.

She had always held aloof from their loose ways. Now the laugh would be with them.

As well as these worries, Hilary was always haunted by the sickly fear that her jailor might come in and catch her at work on the bar. Then that one way of escape would be cut off.

It was trying work too, standing on the top of the pile of furniture, with ears strained. The knowledge of her predicament had taken away her appetite. She could only pick at the food her jailor provided. From lack of food and from fitful nights her head ached continually. Often she felt so dizzy that only with an effort could she keep her balance and continue her labor.

Each evening, long before the shadows started to gather, she had the erection down, and all traces of her work cleared away.

One afternoon Hilary was standing on the top of the pile of furniture, desperate, nervously tense, scratching away at the cement. She worked without pausing, for each tiny pile scraped from the base of the bar brought freedom nearer. Only by her own efforts could she escape from this demented boy.

Only too well now she knew Paul’s quick, light step on the stone stairs outside.

In his desire to get to Hilary, to sob out his pain and anguish at her feet, Paul had not waited to change his clothes. On the stone stairs his canvas shoes made no sound. The slight grate of the key in the lock was the first notice she had of his presence.

“Hilary, I didn’t know. I didn’t understand. I believed all she told me,” a frantic, agonized voice gasped as the door opened.

She did not hear what he said. She did not see the anguish on his face, the stunned, bewildered, pleading, hopeless look in the dark eyes—a look that changed to consternation when he realized her dangerous position. She only knew she had been caught. Found out in her attempt to escape.

In weakness, fear and sickly surprise she lost her balance and came crashing to the ground.

Paul saw the erection sway. He rushed forward. But when he reached Hilary she was lying on her back, limp and unconscious, a little pool of blood gathering where her head rested.

In common with most people staying on the Riviera, Count Naudin was deeply intrigued by the mysterious disappearance of Miss Hilary Fane. For him the affair had a double interest.

His own exchequer at a chronically low ebb, in his estimation money was a woman’s greatest charm. It had been his wife’s chief attraction. Owing to his extravagant ways her wealth had fled, but she remained, now blocking this short cut to fortune. Only by proxy, as it were, could he marry money, and he lived in a state of constant exasperation because what he could not do for himself his nephew refused to do for him.

In his brother-in-law’s time Count Naudin’s poverty had not been so irksome. At least six months of the year could be spent at Cannes or Rochefallain, an easy and pleasant way of recouping. But it was quite another thing to have to keep one’s self—and one’s wife—all the year round, with no generous kinsman to borrow from, when tradesmen became too pressing.

To make both ends meet, life had become a round of cheap and nasty hotels; one room, and that shared with a stout and aging woman who nagged. An odious existence.

One morning Count Naudin lay in bed brooding on his surroundings. It was not a pleasant room; it had a drab paper splashed with bilious roses, and looked out on a blank wall. The carpet was worn and faded, the curtains dingy, the furniture lopsided and rickety. His coffee when it came would be muddy, the roll sour.

There was one bright spot in the count’s dismal outlook. Lately his wife had taken to religion, and spent a good deal of her time in church. He rejoiced that the morning service had a special charm for her. He pretended to be asleep until she left, and was up and away before she returned, foregathering with his cronies. Generally someone stood him lunch or dinner, or both, so that he need not return to that particular hole of a dining-room in whatever particular hole of a hotel he happened to be staying in, and eat third-rate food in no-rate society, at a table with a woman who held him responsible for her misfortunes.

A few minutes ago the bedroom door had closed behind the countess. At its closing he had promptly stretched out a hand and rung for his breakfast. It had come, in company with the morning paper, on a tin tray with battered metal utensils, thick, chipped white, cup and saucer, and a roll reposing with one end in a slop of coffee.

Sitting up the count eyed his repast with distaste. Then, as if consolation must be sought somewhere, he unfolded the morning paper.

It appeared his nephew knew the girl, had met her accidentally, and the chance acquaintance had ripened. He had taken her over his castle and, as she liked the place and the grounds, had given her permission to go there whenever she pleased. On hearing she was missing he had gone straight there, wondering if she could have met with an accident whilst exploring the old pile or its tangled gardens.

In the courtyard he had found her car. But there was no sign of her in the building.

Searching the grounds, he had come upon her lying unconscious in a disused reservoir. Getting a ladder, he had gone down and brought her out. In her car he had taken her at once to the nearest doctor who had pronounced her to be suffering from mild concussion of the brain, shock and exhaustion. And an ambulance had taken her back to her hotel in Cannes.

But for a lucky chance she might have died in her prison from lack of food and water. An orange tree grew by the side of the disused cistern, its ripe fruit occasionally dropping in. There were plenty of stones at the bottom of the old tank and the girl was a good shot. She must have knocked off more fruit and so kept herself alive.

Count Naudin knew the reservoir. It was in the orchard of the castle, an old stone cistern quite twelve feet deep and about twenty feet square, but so cracked that it did not hold water. It was not considered dangerous as there was a wall three feet high around it. But if a person fell in they could not escape without outside assistance.

The marquis surmised, the paper went on to say, that Miss Fane must have stood on the edge to pick an orange, and slipped in. The concussion was quite recent, as her head was still bleeding when he found her. He surmised further that, in standing to throw a stone at the fruit, in weakness she had fainted and fallen backwards on the stone floor of the reservoir.

What really had happened could not be known just yet, as Miss Fane was still unconscious when the paper went to press.

If only that dunderhead played his cards properly! He wanted romance and all that sort of twaddle. Now he had got it, rescuing a pretty girl from slow starvation. A girl, moreover, who was well-bred and had a large fortune of her own. Whom he must have a fancy for, as somehow or other he had managed to burgle his own castle in order to show her over it. But it would be just like him to refuse to touch the goods the gods provided.

He would go at once and have a good talk with that young fool. See if he couldn’t put a bit of sense into his head.

Count Naudin sizzled to himself like a kettle on the verge of boiling, as he moved about his bedroom as briskly as stoutness would allow. The future had become suddenly quite rosy.

In spite of an uncomfortable railway journey and a dusty motor drive, he was still in a happy mood when he reached Paul’s remote mountain stronghold.

Until dusk he waited, without result. Considerably annoyed he decided to motor back to the first passable inn, spend the night there, and try his luck the next morning.

He was up at the cottage betimes. Again his quarry was missing. But there were signs that Paul had been there in the interval.

About three o’clock Paul came in, dressed in his threadbare black and white suit, pushing his bicycle, and looking very worn and weary.

“What were you doing with yourself all yesterday and to-day?” his guardian demanded.

Then he pushed past his uncle, and unlocking his cottage door entered and stored his bicycle against the far wall.

Paul had spent long and tormenting hours in Cannes, haunting the hotel where Hilary was lying. Late the previous night a glimmer of understanding had returned to her. Jack Selby had carried the news to him.

“Could Miss Fane remember anything about her accident?” Paul had asked as calmly as he was able.

“She doesn’t appear to. But the doctor says her memory will come back gradually.”

Paul had wondered how gradually. Gradually enough he hoped for her to pick up his version of the affair from those around her.

If Hilary went on as well as the previous evening’s bulletin predicted, by now she would have recollected all that had happened.

If she told the truth he would take his punishment—the disgrace, the scorn. Welcome it. Nothing the world could do to him could equal his own sufferings.

In a seethe of desperate anxiety Paul had waited, with no thought for himself, only for Hilary, wondering if she had been able to grasp his version of the affair and hide her shame behind his shield of lies.

Presently Selby had appeared, and his greeting had told Paul the truth was still hidden.

“Hilary is much better to-day. Sitting up and taking nourishment. Quite chirpy in fact. She said I was to thank you, and all that, for fishing her out of the reservoir. And I was to tell you she would like to see you soon. Said she’d fix a day.”

At the message Paul’s heart had nearly burst with hope. Then he had remembered that, in order to keep up his structure of lies, she would have to thank him, no matter what her private feelings were.

Gathering what poor comfort he could from the fact that she had deigned to use the shield he had provided, he had cycled back to his refuge utterly worn out with his sufferings, the long journeys, and the happenings of the last week.

The boy wanted to hide his misery and anguish. To have a little time and peace in which to pull himself together and think out a letter to send to Hilary, telling her what had caused his unspeakable behavior. So that before he saw her again, at least she would know what had been at the root of his madness. Forgiveness he dared not hope for. A little pity, a little understanding, perhaps; something to lighten his crushing burden.

“It’s not every day one rescues a pretty heiress. You must make the most of your opportunity, my lad.”

Paul’s only idea was to get rid of his uncle. Not to have to endure this further refinement of torture. He was worn out with the storms and torments of the past week, and the final anguish was tearing him to pieces.

Now that the young fool had found a girl he fancied, the girl wouldn’t marry him!

When reason returned to Hilary, she was conscious of a splitting headache, so bad that she felt she could not endure it. Wearily she opened her eyes, expecting to see a dark head pillowed on the cushions beside her, and find an arm around her, holding her close in jealous possession. Instead, she became dimly aware she was alone, and that it was still dark except for one round ring of light which came from a reading lamp under a green shade.

In a bemused mood she stayed with her eyes on it, the pain in her head so bad that she could neither see nor think clearly.

There was no electric light in the tower. Once darkness fell, there was nothing but Paul. Paul who could not be escaped from. But the Paul she had known and loved was dead. There was now only a man she hated, who went about in his image. The real Paul. Not the one she had set up as an idol in her heart.

As she lay brooding on her shattered dream, weak, blistering tears came to her eyes.

Presently the mist in her clouded brain rose a little. The world became something more than darkness with a patch of light, and a constant pain in her head.

She discerned a vague form by the lamp. A sickly chill ran through her, as it had every time she had heard her jailor’s step on the stone stair outside her prison. She lay with eyes fixed on the misty shape, waiting for and dreading the moment when it would move and come towards her.

In chill anxiety she watched. In course of time she began to see more clearly. The form turned from a shadow into a shape. Into a middle-aged and rather gaunt woman in a neat black dress, with white collar and cuffs and apron.

The surprise of seeing her own maid jogged Hilary’s numb brain into further activity. Her eyes, now accustomed to the gloom, wandered further. Each article of furniture was familiar. Presently, she recognized the apartment as her hotel bedroom.

She had had some awful dream of Paul going mad and keeping her shut up in his castle.

The gnawing pain in her heart vanished suddenly. In relief she almost forgot her headache.

“What time is it, Dakin?” she asked, anxious to throw off the last remnant of her nightmare, to make sure she was not in the midst of some further dream.

“Oh, Miss Hilary,” she said in a voice full of relief, “I’ll call Mrs. Selby and the doctor.”

She had found no answer to these questions when she saw Mrs. Selby coming towards her.

“Oh, my dear, what a shock you gave us all,” she said, on halting by the bed.

In her hazy world Hilary started to ponder on this further problem when she became aware that there was a smart, elderly man behind Mrs. Selby. She had hardly grasped this fact when he was bending over her, feeling her pulse, lifting her eyelids carefully and looking into her eyes.

“Lost to the world for four days, and then found at Rochefallain, of all places.”

She went all hot, yet shivering with shame. And her eyes dropped before the doctor’s close, professional gaze.

Her weakened brain tried to find some excuse. Something for keeping her shame from reaching the world. But she could think of nothing feasible.

Then he turned towards a table and slipped a powder into the glass of hot milk Dakin had just brought in.

When she found the world again, it was daylight. Her head did not ache so terribly, and she was able to think clearly. But she could not invent a feasible excuse for her absence. Then into her tortured brain other thoughts protruded.

Brooding on these matters she lay, conscious that Dakin had entered the room and was now sitting beside her, not daring to open her eyes for fear of what she might see written on her maid’s face.

“Why, I thought you were asleep, Miss Hilary. I’ll fetch your breakfast at once.”

This reply brought a hot flush to Hilary’s white face. In it she read subterfuge, a desire on Dakin’s part to put off discussing the matter as long as possible.

“I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t really,” she said in a broken voice. “I was trying all the time.”

“Hush, now, Miss Hilary. You mustn’t excite yourself,” the woman said in a soothing tone. “Everybody knows you couldn’t get out. The marquis said so.”

“The Marquis of Rochefallain,” Dakin explained. “Such a nice young gentleman. He was here all yesterday, so anxious and worried about you, Miss Hilary. But, of course, you couldn’t remember about him. You were unconscious when he found you.”

What had really happened could not be public property, or Dakin would not be speaking of Paul in this respectful manner.

“In an old reservoir. It was a mercy the young gentleman thought of looking for you there, you might have been slowly starved to death. Yesterday’s paper was full of it.”

“I . . . I . . . can’t think properly,” she stammered. “My head hurts so. What are they saying about me in the papers?”

“I’ll bring one with your breakfast, Miss Hilary. I bought one to send her ladyship, but I knew you’d like to see it first.”

Thinking of her mother’s state of mind the girl momentarily forgot her own troubles.

“I sent one the day before yesterday, Miss Hilary. The moment the ambulance brought you in.”

Dakin went from the room. Hilary lay wondering what could have happened, sufficiently alert to have grasped the fact that she must say nothing until she had seen the newspaper.

She was so weak that she had to be propped up with pillows, and it seemed an age before Dakin brought the tray to the bedside. But Hilary knew she must not show her impatience too apparently.

When she was settled she took a sip of the tea her maid had poured out, and nibbled a finger of buttered toast. Then, leisurely, she opened the newspaper.

On reading Paul’s version her first feeling was one of unutterable relief. At least she had been saved any public disgrace.

In the tower she had had to endure unspeakable humiliation at his hands. Now he had erected this barrier of lies around her, a fence so secure that the truth need never reach the world. Was it to screen himself, knowing quite well that shame would keep her silent?

Hilary was tortured afresh with this question. In spite of all that had happened she could not reconcile herself to this reason. A tiny, feeble voice deep within her argued against it.

According to Dakin, all the previous day he had haunted the hotel. On whose account? Hers or his own?

If his own, the feeble voice pointed out, he would have been wiser to keep away.

Among the letters Dakin brought in was a local one, addressed to her in a pointed, foreign hand. It was in French, and she did not have to look at the signature to find out who the writer was. The first few words told her.

“Hilary, have pity on me. I have sinned past all forgiveness. But I cannot let you go out of my life without trying to make you see the truth.

“The day you sent me that telegram Yvonne Morelli came here, her mouth full of the blackest and vilest of lies about you. She said you were her brother’s mistress, an English actress he had picked up in Paris. You had played the boy so well that I believed her.

“She said you were making sport of me to her brother, because I was so raw and ignorant. I knew I had been a child in your hands, that you had turned me inside out, for Morelli’s amusement it seemed now. And you know how I hate all that crowd.

“Then there was that emerald ring.

“She showed me the receipt with Louis Morelli’s name on it, and said he had given it to you. I had seen a ring of the same sort on your hand only the night before, when you came out of the ballroom of your hotel.

“I loved you. Worshiped you. You were up among the stars. And I thought I had been wholly deceived in you.

“With her lies that creature dragged you from your place among the stars right down into the mire. And in my ignorance and stupidity I believed her. Under the weight of her lies all my love for you turned to mad passion. In unutterable bitterness I lost my senses completely, not caring what I did. Try and forgive me when I say I made up my mind you were all that creature said. I condemned you straight off, in my rage never pausing to consider that jealousy might be her motive.

“Hilary, there is no excuse for me, except that if our hearts are hurt too much we Laurients sometimes go mad. And I had loved you so. Believed in you and trusted you.

“Now it all seems like some horrible fever that I have recovered from to find you perfect, but swept away from me forever by the wild flood of my passion.

“I was too mad to save you from myself, but at least I managed to save you from the world. I dare not even hope that any penitence of mine could ever bring us together again. On my knees I implore you out of the goodness of your heart to send me a little message of pity or understanding, or I cannot live under the crushing burden of my sin.

“Paul.”

Hilary finished the letter feeling that humiliation after humiliation had been heaped upon her. Drearily she wondered how she could have acted that he should believe such lies about her. She was too sick at heart to take into account their different nationalities, or to remember that what was liberty in England might be looked upon as license in France.

Although she now had the clue to his behavior, she was moved to neither pity nor mercy. Pride was up in arms because Paul’s own instinct had not told she could not be the creature Yvonne Morelli had depicted, and she was suffering so much herself that his pain did not touch her.

After sending off his letter, in a seethe of misery and desperation Paul waited for a reply; some message from Hilary appointing a time for his visit. As each dreary day dragged slowly by without bringing any word from her, the blackness of utter despair settled around him.

The boy went about like a person in a trance, unable to believe the facts his own mind knew. He spent long hours of torment in the tower that had been Hilary’s prison, kneeling by the divan in an agony of penitence and remorse, weeping out his pain on the cushions where her head had rested.

She had once loved him. Would have married him. He could not have put out that sacred fire forever. A spark must remain.

At the end of a week, unable to endure his torment any longer, he set off for Cannes.

If only he could see her! She might grant him just one word of pity or understanding. Something to lighten the burden of his sin.

It was mid-morning when Paul reached the hotel, a worn, heavy-eyed and desperate boy.

He still could not credit the words in his ears. Clutching at hope, he imagined Hilary had gone to some quieter hotel for her convalescence.

At these words a stunned look crossed the boy’s face. Whilst he had been waiting for an answer, Hilary had slipped away without a word. Again he wondered at his own colossal folly and stupidity for ever imagining she would do anything else.

“I suppose there’s no letter for me?” he heard himself ask in a dull tone.

The clerk glanced at Paul with a touch of curiosity, but he made no comment. Already the sensation caused by Hilary’s disappearance had died down. Then he turned towards the letter rack and quickly went through the contents of the pigeon hole marked “R.”

That word fell on Paul’s ears like a death sentence. His world of frantic hope came suddenly to an end.

Mortally stricken he left the hotel. There was no ray of light anywhere now. Nothing but pain. A pain so great that it must slowly crush the life out of him.

In theory it was quite simple for Rosa Puget to arrange her life so as to avoid meeting Le Taureau, but in practice it proved quite another matter.

His farm was situated some seven miles from her hamlet, and until she deliberately sought him out their paths seldom crossed. Yet, after that interview in the valley, she could not go twenty yards from her home without meeting him. Savage and sullen he seemed to rise up out of the ground, trying to get a word with her.

As a rule Rosa managed her numerous love affairs single-handed, but Le Taureau rapidly grew more than she could cope with. Before the end of a week, thoroughly frightened, she complained to her brothers about him.

The following Sunday, in a heated mood, the whole five of them called upon him at his farm. It was a low building of grey stone with broken, blistered blue shutters, and a red, lichen-grown roof. Vineyards surrounded it. Here and there was a fig tree, or a flat peach like a pink umbrella, or a clump of olives. In front stood one great elm, its new leaves barely uncurled, making the tree look as if covered with bright yellow blossom. In his father’s day it had been a prosperous place, but now both farm and land were going to ruin.

Plainly and forcibly the Puget brothers gave him to understand he was to let their sister alone.

“If the seigneur has done this, I shall make him pay with his heart’s blood,” Le Taureau bellowed savagely. “I shall be even with him one day. I’ll teach him to interfere between me and my girl. I’ll make him suffer. I’ll——”

“Don’t start spitting venom,” one of the girl’s brothers interrupted. “The seigneur has nothing at all to do with it. If Rosa doesn’t want you, she doesn’t, and that’s the end of it. So just you let her alone.”

By now thoroughly realizing that his suit was hopeless, in Le Taureau’s passion-mad mind it was not the end of it by any means. It was the beginning of a new phase; a phase that kept him out of Rosa’s way for over a week, drinking and brooding at his farm.

Then the girl became aware that he was on her track again, this time with the cunning stealth of a savage beast of prey. By night he prowled round her cottage, and once dusk fell she dared not venture out of doors. Long after the rest of the family were asleep, she lay awake, waiting for a stealthy footstep and the sound of heavy breathing beneath her window. If she were to peep out she knew she would see him there, a great hulking shape in the shadows. Sometimes she called her brothers, but, by the time they got outside, Le Taureau had vanished.

Daily, Mère Puget grew more uneasy. Without a strong escort Rosa dared not venture from the cluster of cottages where her home was situated. Neighbors whispered and watched and waited, several saying openly that, at last, Rosa Puget was getting what she deserved.

The grey tinge of night still lingered over the earth when the girl went into the meadow to stake out the goats she had just milked. Two of her brothers were in a little thatched hovel at the back of the cottage, harnessing their mule to a rude cart, prior to taking their produce into the nearest town.

As Rosa went along, mallet in hand, the goats in chains behind her, a thing like a great bear rose up stealthily from behind a clump of bushes at the side of the field. A thing with bloodshot eyes and unshaven face, and clothing all covered with earth and leaves and twigs, as if it had spent the night on the ground.

It rose so quietly just behind her, that, before the girl knew what was happening, a great, hairy hand covered her mouth and arms lifted her from her feet.

Rosa was no weakling. With all her might she struggled against Le Taureau, tore and scratched and bit at the hand that gagged her.

Heedless of her struggles, he ran towards a path that dropped straight out of view of the meadow, and into a deep, wooded valley.

In starting the descent, his foot turned on a loose stone. With the little fury fighting in his arms, to keep his balance his hand momentarily left her mouth.

It was only for a second. But during that second the still morning air was ripped by a shrill, piercing scream.

Presently he became conscious of pursuit. For all that, he did not drop his prey. Increasing his pace he made towards a thick grove of cork trees. Before he reached there, however, heavy blows were falling on him, feet were tripping him up.

Dropping Rosa, in wild fury he faced round, to fight whatever had come between him and his desire.

His two opponents were big men also. Presently, in spite of fighting like a lunatic, he was lying on his back partially stunned. Even then he only saw Rosa, not her brothers.

“I shall have you yet, you little flirt. If I have to fight all the devils of hell to get you.”

With her apron over her head the girl was crying noisily. At his voice she tore down the screen and faced him, a blazing little fury.

“Here, don’t waste any more of our time,” one of her brothers broke in sharply. “We shall be late enough as it is, and the best market gone.”

Then they each seized an arm of the weeping girl and hustled her up the hill towards their cottage.

Hilary Fane returned to England the moment she was able to travel, as an excuse for her hurried departure pleading an urgent wire from her mother.

She arrived home looking very thin and pale and ill, and Lady Fane spent a happy fortnight in nursing her daughter back to health. The girl was thankful her mother had not suffered much on her account. Fortunately Dakin’s telegram had arrived before the news of her disappearance had reached England.

Lady Fane did not expect her daughter to stay at home once she was really better. For the last few years a week-end had been the longest extent of the girl’s visits. Yet a month passed and Hilary was still with her mother, and, what was more surprising, was not talking of going back to London, or dropping hints of further jaunts abroad.

The mother wondered what had happened. At once she had noticed a great change in her child—a change that it would take more than illness to account for.

Hilary was quieter and more thoughtful; she did not smoke incessantly; it was no longer necessary to have whiskey on at afternoon tea or in the drawing-room of an evening. The girl was now kind and considerate to the elderly, old-fashioned people who comprised her mother’s immediate circle of friends; she never showed herself openly bored, or made clever, scathing remarks about them when they had gone. It seemed to the mother she had her real daughter back again, the Hilary of Fanesdene days, not the restless creature of the last few years.

Often she pondered on the change, unable, at last, to keep her joy and relief to herself.

It was after one specially dull tea party connected with village happenings. She had warned Hilary, expecting her daughter would avoid the drawing-room, and have tea by herself in the library. To her surprise the girl volunteered to help entertain the guests; when they came, moving among them, gracious and smiling, listening in an interested manner to their dull and trivial conversation.

When the party was over and the last person gone Lady Fane heaved a sigh of relief.

“What a hardened hypocrite you are, Mother. You looked as if you were thoroughly enjoying yourself.”

“Perhaps I’m training my powers of endurance,” Hilary said evasively, as she turned towards a side table, to pick a novel from the pile there.

“At the same time giving me much needed help,” her mother said. “It is so nice to have my real Hilary back,” she went on. “I like her so much better than the flighty young baggage who used sometimes to come and spend a week-end with me.”

These remarks from her mother’s lips filled Hilary with a queer sort of dismay. Never before had Lady Fane been so plain spoken. Until brought up sharply by Paul’s tragic estimate of her, Hilary had not paused to consider what her mode of life might have looked like to a more sedate world.

Haphazardly she picked out a book, and with it in her hand seated herself on a low chair by the fire. Although she opened the novel, she did not read it. She sat pondering on what her mother had said.

Hilary had always flattered herself that she could touch pitch and remain undefiled. Now she was wondering if she had been wrong.

Perhaps the aura of the wild set in which she had moved had clung about her. Perhaps she had got into their loose way of talking. Perhaps she had said and done things no girl of her age and position ought. Perhaps Paul had judged her by the company she kept. Perhaps there was some slight excuse for him. Perhaps——

Hilary tried to stop her thoughts, but they insisted on going on, pointing out facts that, until now, she had refused to look at.

In a country where the sexes are carefully separated, where no young girl of any standing is allowed to be alone with a man unless he is a near relation, she had gone unchaperoned to the house of a young man who lived all by himself, staying with him for hours on end.

For the first time Hilary looked at her behavior from a French point of view. With a shamed rush she realized that in the eyes of that nation she had got what she deserved. What she might even be accused of asking for, in fact!

In the letter that had come to her in Cannes, Paul had put no shadow of the blame on her. Now she saw he had some grounds for believing Yvonne’s lies; for refusing to credit her, Hilary’s, version of herself.

During her four weeks in England Hilary had received a number of letters from France, forwarded from the hotel in Cannes. Letters written in a foreign, pointed hand, all of which she had returned unopened.

Always she had to keep a sharp watch on herself. In spite of her determination never to think about Paul, to put him out of her life entirely, at any moment her mind might slip back to him. Paul, of Provence, with his serious young face and shy, grave smile.

What was more, occasionally she was both amazed and desperately annoyed with herself because somewhere within her a feeble little voice was raised in his defence. It pointed out that she ought to have remembered she was playing with fire. He was one of the “volcanic Laurients”; a hot-blooded, passionate youngster who, for the sake of an ideal, had kept all his fiery nature dammed up.

But when the little voice started talking in this strain, pride always tried to shout it down.

Five weeks passed, and Hilary was still with her mother. But, now, a touch of anxiety had come to mingle with the older woman’s delight.

Her girl was still a trifle pale. And she seemed to be moping about something. Of an evening when they sat together, Lady Fane playing patience, Hilary with a book, the mother often noticed her child was not reading, for sometimes Hilary would sit for half an hour without turning a page.

Because of this, Lady Fane had long interviews with her cook. Dishes that were Hilary’s favorites always appeared at meals.

One day at lunch, the mother became really anxious. The menu had been chosen specially to suit her daughter, yet Hilary ate practically nothing.

After the meal was over, and the butler had brought their coffee into the lounge hall, the older woman inquired further into the matter.

“What is the matter with you, Hilary?” she asked, the moment the man was out of earshot.

The question brought a rather startled expression to the girl’s face. A moment or two passed before she spoke, and then she put a question of her own.

“You don’t seem quite yourself yet. You haven’t got your color back, nor your appetite.”

“What a watchful little mother it is,” Hilary said, forcing a laugh. “One can’t fall down and break one’s crown and get over it in five minutes.”

“As long as that! I’d no idea,” the girl said, in a tone of surprise that did not ring quite true. “How the time has flown! It’s your fault for making me so happy and comfortable. For treating me as if I were the hub of the universe.”

This Hilary knew quite well, and the knowledge had drawbacks as well as advantages. Never again, if she could help it, would she distress her mother. Yet a fear now weighed like lead upon her, that, unless she were very careful, she might cause the greatest grief of all to the frail little mother who had suffered so much.

Hilary had lied bravely when she had said she had no idea it was so long since her so-called accident. She knew to a day, an hour almost, and she felt as if she had been home not five weeks but five centuries. All flavor had gone out of life. There was nowhere she wanted to go; nothing she wanted to do, except forget Paul. She had left France determined to cut adrift from him forever, but now it seemed she would not be able to escape from him. His shadow was always over her, growing more concrete with each passing day.

Her coffee finished, Hilary got up and crossed to a big round window, well aware her mother’s anxious eyes were upon her. For some minutes she stood gazing out. But she did not see the sweep of lawn, the silver birches, the beds full of red and yellow tulips, the first golden tinge of the laburnum, all warm in the May sunshine. She saw only the cherry trees in the orchard beyond, white against the blue sky, a froth of blossom.

In his land the cherries were ripe in May. In hers they would not be ready until July.

Hilary’s mind would dwell on this word, and something about it brought a strained look to her clear, golden eyes.

“What a lovely afternoon,” she said presently. “I’ll take the dogs for a long run, and come in with an appetite for tea that will amaze you.”

Presently, bareheaded, and in a short tweed costume, with two Alsatians at her heels, she set off on her ramble. She walked in a quick, feverish manner as though trying to get away from something, so deep in thought that only when a cold nose touched her hand did she throw a word to her companions.

On returning home some three hours later she did not eat the enormous tea she had promised. Toasted scones and home-made orange cake remained untouched, in spite of a ten mile walk.

Remembering her own young days Lady Fane had now thought of another reason for the change in her daughter.

“What on earth makes you ask that? Falling in love has never been much in my line, as you know.”

“You are so quiet and thoughtful now. And sometimes you look just a little worried.”

Hilary was worried almost beyond endurance, but she was determined that her private troubles should not touch her mother.

“Perhaps I’m repenting my bold bad past,” she said. “Perhaps I’m contemplating a voyage round the world.”

There was a wail of distress in the older woman’s voice. She saw the real Hilary vanishing, and in her place coming “the flighty young baggage.”

“Well, I’d rather you went with only Dakin as a companion than with some of the people you’ve been going about with lately.”

Getting up from the tea-table Hilary went to the chimney-piece and took a cigarette from the box there.

“I hadn’t even thought of taking her,” she said slowly, as she lighted the cigarette. “Twelve months on end is rather a long time to expect a woman of her years to keep rolling.”

“Twelve months! You surely can’t be contemplating going away for twelve months without some sort of a companion!”

“Not of your age and position. If you can’t find someone really nice to go with, I shall come with you myself.”

For the past twelve years her mother had never gone further afield than to a seaside resort for a month in the summer, and a few days’ shopping in London during the winter. And never at any time of her life had she been a traveler.

“But, darling, you couldn’t stand a voyage round the world. It would kill you.”

The mother was fighting for her real daughter, fighting for fear that if her child went away again, she might get swamped by some other wild set.

“I can’t bear to hear people talking about you,” she went on brokenly. “I can’t bear to lose my real Hilary again.”

In a moment the girl was at her mother’s side. She drew the small silver head on her shoulder and kissed the worn, wet, little face.

“Don’t cry, Mother dear,” she whispered. “I shan’t go if it’s going to worry you.”

“Promise me you won’t go alone, Hilary. Promise me you won’t go unless with really nice people.”

“Of course I won’t, my poor little Mumsie. Now dry your eyes and don’t worry any more.”

Lady Fane dried her eyes. Yet she did not cease to worry, but now on another score.

The days went on, and Hilary still had that habit of pretending to read, but in reality only sitting and brooding. Having no clue, her mother imagined the girl’s mind still was on the estate she had lost.

A few evenings later Lady Fane returned to the subject of her daughter’s travels.

It was after dinner as they sat together in the drawing-room. Hilary was not even pretending to read. She was sitting crumpled up on a floor cushion, her arms around her knees, gazing fixedly at the fire.

“Perhaps I am rather a dog in the manger,” her mother said presently, as she gathered up her patience cards and shuffled them ready for another deal.

“Not letting you go round the world alone. You lost Fanesdene through being a woman. And now for the same reason I’m trying to keep you from doing what you want.”

“You’ll alter your mind if you have the luck to get a really good husband,” Lady Fane said with conviction in her voice as she started to lay out her cards in neat rows.

“Don’t forget, Mumsie,” she said presently, “that there’s such a thing as auto-suggestion.”

“What has auto-suggestion to do with anything I’ve been saying?” her mother asked a trifle absently, her gaze on her cards.

“My husband seems such an established fact in your mind that one day if you’re not careful you may ‘wish’ me into marrying.”

Her mother laughed, a sad little laugh that seemed to have had all the mirth washed out of it by tears.

“What strange things you do hold your parents responsible for, my daughter. Your father ‘wished’ you into being a girl. Now I’m ‘wishing’ you into getting married.”

“But suppose you were sitting all alone here one evening, and the door opened suddenly, and in I walked with a strange young man in tow and said, ‘Mother, do come and look at this. I married it this morning.’ ”

“I hope, darling, you would give me a little more notice than that. Enough time to kill the fatted calf.”

“No; only my poor Hilary, who through no fault of her own lost her heritage.”

“If you could, you would have given it to me, wouldn’t you, Mother of mine?”

Hilary said nothing more. She stayed with her head resting against her mother’s knee, decision growing among the thoughts that haunted the golden shadows of her eyes.

Paul Laurient was glad when the violets faded and the mimosa ceased to drip its golden tears. Hilary had been sweet with the scent of violets, and over the mimosa’s golden sprays, her eyes had looked at him, full of horror and dismay.

Often he sat under the cherry tree feeling he must be suffering from delusions; that it was all some wild fever that was slowly draining the life out of him. Sometimes he sat all night with the stars, the fireflies dancing around him, praying dumbly that he might be given a chance to prove to her he was not the brute he had acted. Daylight would bring him back to earth, dew-drenched and shivering, wondering how he still could be so mad as to imagine any such chance would be granted to him.

After Hilary’s departure, out of the agony of his crushing burden of sin had come those letters he had sent to her; those wild epistles, begging, entreating, for just one word of pity or understanding. Letters that had come back unopened, readdressed in a firm, clear, round hand; and each left him numbly wondering why he should hope for pity or understanding when he had shown her none.

As time dragged on, Paul’s mental sufferings began to show. Much as he tried he could not hide his pain from the world. Each week he grew thinner and more haggard, and a hopeless, stricken look came through the velvet of his eyes.

In spite of seeing the young man every few days, Mère Puget quickly noticed the change in him.

“What is the matter with you, mon petit?” she asked one day. “You’re getting just a bag of bones. You look so suffering.”

“It’s killing you, the life you’re leading. You were not born to work like a laborer. Why can’t your guardians let you have the money that is yours?” she cried indignantly.

“If they go on at this rate there’ll soon be no Marquis of Rochefallain for them to marry to a rich lady. It will be a funeral they will force you into, not a wedding.”

“The spring always tries me. There’s so much more work to do then,” the boy said drearily.

“Then I’ll send one of my great sons along to help you,” she answered promptly.

Mère Puget knew his independence. Had he allowed her to do so she would have kept Paul in idleness at her cottage, and made her own brood work for him.

“It’s Rosa,” she sobbed. “But for Cesar and Baptisten——! Oh dear, what shall I do?”

Between loud sobs and shrill curses on Le Taureau, she told Paul what had happened only that morning in the meadow, when Rosa had gone as usual to stake out the goats.

His young face pain-drawn, the boy listened. Every word cut into his being. What Rosa had escaped by a fluke, Hilary had had to endure.

“You must send Rosa right away for a time,” he said in a strained voice. “Where Le Taureau can’t get at her. Have you no friends or relations she can go to?”

“I have an old friend who married a farmer in Brittany. Rosa could go there. But think of the money! Five hundred francs at least will be needed.”

Paul knew his peasants. Like all her class Mère Puget had her little savings, as dear to her, almost, as her daughter. Over spending so large a sum she might hesitate until it was too late.

“Don’t worry about the money,” he said. “Send Rosa away at once. I’ll give you the five hundred francs back with interest, the moment I’m of age.”

The woman caught his hand, covering it with tears and kisses, calling blessings down upon him.

“There never has been a friend like you, mon petit,” she finished with tearful relief. “So good and kind. Rosa shall go this very night.”

His produce delivered and Mère Puget soothed, Paul made his way back to his refuge.

The next afternoon he was in his tiny orchard collecting eggs when he heard a cart draw up outside. Putting down the basket he went forward, thinking it was the baker, who called at his refuge twice weekly.

To his surprise, on reaching the mimosa grove, Paul saw the visitor was Le Taureau.

“So you told Mère Puget to send Rosa away, did you?” he snarled. “You gave her the money to go with.”

Only too conscious of his own sin Paul did not order Le Taureau off his premises in the peremptory manner he otherwise would have done.

“And you’ve only yourself to blame for anything that happens now—or at any time,” the other retorted savagely.

Before Paul knew what was happening, Le Taureau aimed a thundering blow at him. Unprepared, it caught the boy on the side of the head and sent him staggering backwards. Dazed, he braced himself up for a fight, knowing that in his present worn-out condition he was not likely to come off victor. But, before he regained his balance, Le Taureau launched a kick at him. It caught him on the hip with such pain and force that he fell to the ground. There was no one to see fair play. Before he could get up, his opponent’s heavy, hobnailed boot struck him on the head, a blow that stunned him.

Then, for some minutes, in a sort of mad frenzy Le Taureau stayed savagely kicking the unconscious form at his feet.

Mère Puget was a fortnight nursing her foster-son back to something approaching strength. About two hours after Le Taureau’s visit, the local baker had found the boy in the mimosa grove, unconscious and a mass of blood and bruises. The man had taken him to Mère Puget’s cottage. Post haste she had dispatched a neighbor to the nearest telephone to call a doctor.

It was discovered that Paul had a couple of broken ribs as well as being a mass of lacerated flesh and great bruises. In the minds of the Puget family there was no doubt as to who was responsible for the boy’s condition. Three of the brothers went over to the bully’s farm and gave him a little of what he had dealt out to their landlord.

When Paul returned to consciousness, knowing what was the cause of Le Taureau’s savage attack, he refused to have his tenant arrested.

Although at the end of a fortnight he was able to return to his hovel, in the eyes of the community he never recovered from the mauling the bully had given him. He seemed to be visibly wasting away.

By now Paul was glad the man had set on him. His mental sufferings were telling on him, and he was thankful for some excuse to hide behind.

The cherry blossom had been a froth of white against the blue of the Riviera sky when Hilary Fane first found her way to Paul Laurient’s refuge. When the fruit started to ripen, the boy was a wraith of the one who had been her friend and companion—a wraith that dragged itself laboriously through the days. But for disgracing himself in the eyes of the world as well as in his own sight, Paul would have put an end to his misery. He would have gone and hanged himself in the tower that had been Hilary’s prison.

Over his state of health his guardians were both jubilant and concerned. He could not possibly hold out much longer. Like jackals on the track of some dying creature, they were now always after him. Hardly a week passed without a visit from one or the other of them, and letters came almost daily.

One morning, a skeleton in blue rags, Paul was sitting in his hovel kitchen, trying to get together sufficient energy to dig up several rows of potatoes, at the same time wondering drearily how much longer he could go on, and what would happen when the burden of his sin made him collapse altogether.

The thought of his treatment of Hilary haunted him constantly; it kept appetite and sleep at bay, racking him by day and by night.

Presently, in a listless manner he got up and went down his garden, to a tiny thatched shed where his tools were kept. As he was getting out a fork, he heard the click of a latch, and a moment later the postman entered, letter in hand.

“Don’t trouble to bring it over here,” he called. “Fling it on the table.”

The postman followed out his instructions, putting the letter on the table under the cherry tree.

Laboriously Paul set about his digging. The task left him breathless and panting, the sweat of weakness pouring down his thin face and hollow chest. Eleven o’clock seemed as if it would never come, the hour when he might knock off and sit down for a bit.

With a sigh of relief he dropped his fork and dragged himself back to his hovel. From the cupboard he took a slice of bread and a glass of thin wine. Nowadays, it was too much trouble even to prepare a bit of salad to render his meal more palatable.

With the bread in one hand and the wine in the other, he left the cottage and went towards the seat under the cherry tree. Then he stood as if suddenly turned to stone, just staring at the letter lying on the table.

The writing he knew, but it was in no way connected with his guardians. It was the clear, round, firm hand that had been on those letters of his, returned unopened and readdressed from England.

Like one who moves in dreams he put the glass of wine and the piece of bread on the table. With shaking hands he picked up the letter, and fumblingly opened it; yet all the time clutching it tightly, as though afraid it might vanish.

It contained only an address, a signature, and two lines in French; yet for Paul they were the light of the world.

“I shall be at the above address on May 10th. Will you come about 12 midday?”

“Hilary Fane.”

Why she wanted to see him, Paul was in no condition to consider. He only knew that of her own accord she had come back into his life.

The fact robbed him of his little remaining strength. He sank down on the bench, his head on the table, his lips pressing the cold little note her hand had written.

How Paul lived through the next twenty-four hours he did not know. Well before the appointed time he was in the village Hilary had mentioned. In a little shop there, he left his bicycle, and removed the dust and dirt of his journey. Then, in a seethe of wild hope, nervousness and desperation which seemed tearing him to pieces, he set out for her hotel.

On reaching there and inquiring for Miss Fane, he was taken to the first floor and shown into a private sitting-room.

In spite of the fact that Hilary was prepared for his visit and had schooled herself to meet him, when the door opened and a voice announced, “Le Marquis de Rochefallain,” her heart gave a great jump and then pattered on in a nervous, irregular thrum. She went all hot and trembling, feeling more than ever unable to face the task immediately before her.

She had arrived at the hotel only an hour before, coming straight out from England, a twenty-four hours’ journey. On the train she had not slept. All night she had lain awake wondering how to put her proposition into words, and no satisfactory way had presented itself.

When the door opened she was standing by the window, fidgeting nervously with the curtain. Quickly she turned round, her hand going to the back of a chair near, as if she needed some outside support.

The young man entering was not the Paul she had expected to see; this broken wreck with the hollow cheeks and sunken eyes, and the shabby old black and white suit hanging on to a frame that was little more than a skeleton.

But for the suit she hardly would have known him. He looked so ill, and was so altered. The boy she loved was dead, but his ghost had come to haunt her, looking at her with pleading, stricken eyes, still begging and craving for the one word of pity that she had refused to grant him.

On entering the room Paul saw only Hilary, so graceful and slender, in a little, short-sleeved frock of pale yellow, with the sun glinting on her cropped golden head. Hilary with her frank, boyish face and clear eyes.

He heard the door close behind him. Trembling he went forward, and stood before her with bent head, like a beggar.

For a moment longer she looked at the haggard, burnt-out wraith before her. Then she seated herself on a chair nearby.

“Sit down. I want to talk to you,” she said in a more kindly tone than she had intended to use.

Paul did not sit down. He seemed to collapse in a shaking heap at her feet. Trembling, skeleton hands clutched her frock, and a haggard, working face looked up at her with piteous entreaty.

“Hilary, I didn’t know. I didn’t understand. I just went mad. I can’t bear it. I can’t,” he gasped in a choked voice.

With those thin shaking hands clutching her skirt with such desperate entreaty, that choked young voice gasping out its penitence, that hollow face so torn and tortured, looking up at her in an agony of remorse, deep down within her heart something stirred. Pity suddenly came to life, a pity pride tried hard to suppress, but could not. Whatever she might have suffered she now saw he had suffered more.

“I don’t want you to make a scene,” she said in a distant tone of voice, still trying hard to suppress the new emotion within her. “Please sit down and listen to what I have to say.”

He got to his feet, but he did not sit down. Like a whipped dog he stood watching her furtively, waiting for her to speak.

Paul had no idea. He still hardly dared believe that she had come into his life again.

In a quick, nervous manner she got to her feet, and with her back towards him started fidgeting with the flowers on a table beside her.

What Hilary wanted to say she would have written to him about had she dared. But she was haunted by the fear that the letter might go astray, as letters abroad are apt to, and the news get into outside hands.

Paul watched her as she played uneasily with the blossoms. He noticed her hands were shaking, her movements aimless, just a nervous pulling out and pushing in of the same flowers.

It was now obvious to him that she was distressed about something. In her distress she had come to him. The knowledge eased his burden a trifle and put a little courage into him.

“If there’s anything I can do, you have only to say. And I’ll do it, if it costs me my life.”

Had he but known it, Hilary now felt entirely at his mercy. The knowledge filled her with shame, which his declaration of service did not quell.

This Hilary knew only too well. Once, the fact had amused her. Then, it had caused her the greatest pain of her life. Now, it was getting her into further depths of degradation.

With a little gesture of helpless desperation she turned from him again, and went to the window. Her back towards him, she stood toying with the curtain, pleating it up and then letting it run loose again.

As Paul watched her he wondered numbly why he had been such a fool as not to have guessed from the first that his friend was a girl. If he had known all along the line, things would not have ended so tragically. Her sex would not have come upon him with a rush that had almost stunned him, filling him with a storm of new emotions that had knocked him off his balance.

All at once she seemed to droop before him. The stiffening of pride and anger went out of her. Over the alabaster of her arms and neck came a hot, painful rush of red.

The sight of that slender, graceful figure, suddenly so bent and broken before him, left Paul almost bursting with hopeless love and protection. He forgot all that had happened. He remembered only that his beloved was in distress and that he must help her if he could.

“Don’t be afraid, Hilary,” he said gently. “What is it? Do tell me, I can’t help you unless I know, can I?”

The red deepened. Paul waited. Then a shamed, trembling whisper reached his ears.

“I . . . I think—— I . . . I mean I know there . . . there’s going to be—a child.”

The possibility was one that had never entered the young man’s mind. Her confession made him give a gasp of sudden, overwhelming emotion.

Shame kept Hilary from looking round, but through all her own confusion she knew a storm was raging just behind her.

At last Paul understood. He was in a delirium of joy and relief. Now he knew why Hilary had come back. To marry him. He did not know how he kept from throwing himself at her feet, and weeping in his unutterable thankfulness. The chance he had prayed for was now given to him—the chance to make good.

Every particle of his being seemed suddenly flaming with love, relief and protection. With her confession Hilary had given him his life back, a life that now could be devoted to her.

On realizing what was happening, at first in shame and horror she had considered only herself. She had contemplated going right away, to New Zealand or South Africa, where no one knew her, in some remote spot getting through her trouble alone. The child was to be left in some orphanage. Then she would return to England, her disgrace hidden.

Her mother’s determination not to let her travel alone had put an end to this plan. Then she had thought of other matters. Her sense of heritage rose up within her, so strong that eventually it overcame pride.

Her baby was almost sure to be a boy. Its whole future lay with her. It was for her to choose whether it was brought up as a bastard in some Overseas orphanage, or as the heir to one of the oldest names in France.

She was amazed at herself for ever having contemplated anything except what was best for the child.

“I’m not going to pretend I’m sorry for what you’ve told me,” Paul said presently, in a strained, hoarse way, “if it’s going to bring us together again.”

At his words pride momentarily swamped shame. With crimson face and angry eyes she swung round on him.

“Even if I have to marry you, you don’t suppose I shall ever live with you as your wife,” she cried with trembling indignation.

Paul realized the torment of pride and humiliation she must have endured before coming to him. But the fact that she had come was pouring new life into him. Already he looked quite different from the hopeless wreck who had entered the room.

“I’m not quite so stupid as to expect that,” he answered quietly. “I’m only too grateful to you for being willing to take my name.”

Hilary knew that if the part were to be played properly and disgrace kept from her, she would have to take more than his name—his company and occasional caresses. Before outsiders they would have to behave as normal man and wife.

Paul knew this too. He also knew they would have to be married as soon as possible.

“My uncle is in Monte Carlo,” he continued. “I’ll phone him from here. Tell him to get things going at once, so that we can be married the moment the necessary six weeks are up.”

“Six weeks,” she repeated in a dazed manner. “But . . . but it only takes a day or two in England. Is there no such thing as special license in France?”

His answer filled her with sickly consternation. She had come determined to be married at once, in her anxiety not pausing to consider that French marriage laws might be different from English ones.

Paul’s answer brought this fact suddenly before her. The knowledge left her horrorstricken. Every one would know it was a forced marriage. The whispers and sneers she dreaded would come her way in spite of all efforts.

Hilary had lived through a whole gamut of emotions during the last two months. She had had a long and tiring railway journey, a nerve-wearing interview, and under this final piece of news she broke down entirely.

Collapsing into a chair she covered her face with her hands and started to cry, stifled, tearing sobs that she could not keep back.

Some new-born instinct pointed out to Paul that under present conditions it could not be good for her to be distressed in this manner.

Hilary could see none. Her brain seemed utterly worn out. Her sobs continued, the wild storm of overwrought nerves that have suddenly given way.

The young man watched her, distress and anxiety on his face, not daring to do what his heart suggested—that was to draw the sleek golden head on to his shoulder and hold her close against him until the storm passed.

Presently, unable to bear any more, he came and stood over her, patting her shoulder and stroking her arm.

“Hush, Carissima,” he whispered, “you mustn’t cry so. I’ll do everything I can to save you. You know that, don’t you?”

When the interview started, Hilary had had no intention of crying in front of Paul, nor had expected to have his caressing hand upon her. But his touch and closeness held the old soothing drug she had been dimly conscious of even in those wild days in the tower.

Her sobs died down a little. She remembered he had saved her from disgrace once before. With an effort she pulled herself together.

Paul crossed to the window. Deep in thought he stood there, his young brow puckered and anxious.

As the Monte Carlo season drew to a close Count Naudin received fewer invitations to lunch and dine at other hotels. He had to return to his own for most of his meals, so he made a point of getting back late, hoping that his wife would have left the table before he appeared.

One day, following out these tactics, it was nearly half-past one before he arrived at his hotel. As he was making towards the dining-room, the proprietor looked out of the bureau.

“There was a telephone call for M. le Count about half an hour ago,” he said. “From the Marquis of Rochefallain. He wants M. le Count to ring him up at once, at this number.”

The man held out a pencilled slip. Count Naudin took it, and looking at the address wondered what Paul was doing at a hotel in that part of the country, and what he wanted to talk about. Nowadays it was difficult to get even a word out of the young fool. He was fretting himself to death over the English heiress who would not marry him. Instead of sensibly considering the French one who would.

It occurred to the count that his nephew might have come to his senses at last, and have decided to surrender. With a jubilant feeling he went to the telephone, and rang up the number on the slip.

Some minutes elapsed before the call came through. During the wait Count Naudin was arranging the terms he would dictate to the rebel.

“Well, what is it?” he asked sharply, the moment he heard his nephew’s voice.

“Indeed! And pray, who is the future Marquise?” his uncle asked, by now having recovered from the shock.

“Miss Hilary Fane! I thought you said she wouldn’t have you at any price.”

“I’ve been writing to her ever since she left, begging her to think better of it.”

There was a new note in the boy’s voice, as if he were suddenly very much alive and alert, not the weary, dispirited youngster of the last few weeks.

“I didn’t think I had the ghost of a chance. Then Hilary landed up here to-day and said she would have me. I’m pretty well off my head, as you may imagine. I want you to come along here at once and fix things up.”

Had the count been in an analytical mood he might have paused to consider that Paul’s mode of announcing his engagement was not quite that of a young man “pretty well off his head.” There was a measured, careful note in his voice, as of one who moves in dangerous places. But his uncle was too elated at the news to hear anything but the facts Paul was mentioning.

“No one knows that better than me. Come as soon as you can and meet Hilary. She’s going back to England to-morrow morning, and I’d like you to see her before she goes. Besides, there are lots of things I want to talk to you about.”

There was a lot Count Naudin wanted to say also, but most of all he wanted to clinch this wealthy marriage. To him Paul had proved such an unknown quantity, that at the back of his mind there lingered the fear that, at the last moment, the young man might shy at the girl’s money.

There was a little more conversation, mostly by the uncle, a further flood of congratulations, interspersed with inquiries regarding the amount of Hilary’s fortune and prospects, matters about which Paul was strangely vague. Then the exchange stepped in and cut them off.

It was after six o’clock when Count Naudin reached the hotel his nephew had telephoned from. On entering he found the latter waiting for him in the lounge.

Paul had to endure another shower of congratulations. Then his guardian looked round for Hilary.

During the journey to the tiny resort in the hills the count had made a pleasant arrangement with himself; he was to act as guide, philosopher and friend to the wealthy young heiress his fool of a nephew was marrying; he would make himself indispensable to the girl, and so enjoy to the fullest the fruits of this excellent match.

“Hilary was awfully tired after her journey, so I advised her to lie down. You’ll meet her at dinner.”

To have the ground cut away from beneath his feet, as it were—Paul advising the young heiress, and not himself—did not altogether please Count Naudin, but he was too elated over the coming marriage to give rein to any ill temper.

On hearing Paul’s plans for their future, Hilary had wanted to go back to England by the first available train and get on with her part of the plot. But the boy had vetoed this. He pointed out that for her to leave without meeting his guardian-in-chief would not be quite a natural proceeding, and that the great thing was to act as if all were quite normal.

They had lunch together, a meal that Paul ate and enjoyed and Hilary hardly touched; he determined to get back his strength as soon as possible so as to be able to help her in every way he could; she too worried to have any appetite left.

During the meal they had completed their plans. When lunch was over she had gone to her room to try and get a little sleep, and he had urged her to stay there until dinner. By then his uncle would have got used to the fact of their engagement, and he, Paul, would have had time to lay his scheme of lies before his guardian.

On hearing his future niece was not to be seen just yet, the count went to the bureau, booked himself a room and left his suitcase to be sent up.

“Now, let’s get to business,” the youngster said, when they were settled. “I want to be married as soon as possible.”

“I want to make sure of Hilary this time. You see, she turned me down once. And I want to get her now before she can change her mind.”

This was a circumstance the count had never given a thought to, and it filled him with a sense of possible calamity.

“Yes, yes,” he agreed again, this time anxiously. “We must prevent that at all costs.”

Understanding his uncle thoroughly the boy knew exactly which string to play on to get the best effect.

“In six weeks’ time Hilary may have decided she won’t have me. And I—couldn’t stand a second disappointment.”

“But if the match is arranged she’ll have to marry you,” he said in sudden anger, puffing out his cheeks.

“There’s no ‘have to’ where Hilary is concerned. She’s entirely her own mistress. She has no guardians to consult, only her own whims.”

This was news to the count. Paul did not mind what lies he told so long as he could erect some sort of a fortification around the girl.

The mere fact that he had thought of a possible way of screening her had brought her closer to him than he had ever dared to imagine.

“You don’t say so!” his guardian exclaimed. “It’s not right that a young girl should have her fortune and her future entirely in her own hands, and be in a position to play fast and loose with a Marquis of Rochefallain,” he finished with pompous indignation.

“It may not be right, but it’s a fact all the same,” Paul answered. “I’ve been through hell since Hilary threw me over. We . . . we had a little—misunderstanding. Because of it she said she wouldn’t have me at any price. Fortunately for me she has changed her mind, and come back very penitent. Very ready to do anything I want. So naturally I’m pushing my advantage.”

“But six weeks!” the count ejaculated. “And a girl who doesn’t know her own mind from one day to the next! Mon dieu, it’s unthinkable.”

As if in dire pain he groaned. At that moment he saw twenty thousand English pounds a year vanishing before the bargain could be completed.

The youngster was sitting slightly bowed, his hands knitted together between his knees, his gaze on the ground, an attitude which kept him from having to meet his uncle’s glance. His mien looked both brooding and anxious, thoroughly in keeping with the story he was unfolding.

“Well, I’ve thought of a way,” he said slowly. “It’s a bit irregular, but Hilary doesn’t seem to realize it. You see she doesn’t know anything about French marriage laws. But if I’m to carry out my scheme you’ll have to advance me some of the money due to me.”

“If money will help I’ll give you a cheque for ten thousand francs now. And you shall have the whole amount the moment I can get the signatures of your other guardians.”

Paul was in dire need of ready money. At the moment he had not twenty francs of his own.

“Whilst we’re on the subject,” he said. “I suppose the estate can be let for another year. Hilary is anxious for me to do a bit of sightseeing before we settle down.”

“Yes, yes, of course it can be let for another year,” his uncle said impatiently. “That’s a very minor matter. Your estate isn’t going to run away from you. But it seems this young lady may, if she isn’t handled very carefully.”

“That’s just it. And I don’t care what I do so long as I can make sure of her. I couldn’t run the risk of losing her again. It would just finish me.”

“In England one can be married within a day or two by special license. This I pointed out to Hilary. I . . . I took a firm stand. I said I wouldn’t be played with any more. I said she’d have to marry me at once in England, or I wouldn’t marry her at all. In fact I gave her quite a scare. That’s why she’s going back to-morrow, and I’m going to London in three days’ time. As soon as you and I have fixed up things for a civil marriage in Paris.”

“Of course it’s a bit irregular, Paul. It practically means that for nearly six weeks you’re living with a girl who isn’t your wife in the eyes of our law.”

“Fortunately Hilary doesn’t realize that. And she is my wife according to English law. And I’ve got her, haven’t I? She can’t back out. I shouldn’t play this low trick on her except that . . . that—— It would kill me if she changed her mind again.”

“It isn’t a low trick,” the count said haughtily. “The girl has brought it on herself by her own capricious ways. In due course you’re going to make her your wife according to our law.”

“You really are smart, Paul,” he said presently. “You can make sure of the money when you want. I wouldn’t have credited you with so much sense.”

For the youngster these were lacerating words. There was no thought in his head but how to save Hilary from the result of his own sin.

“Thank goodness Hilary knows I’m no fortune-hunter, whatever else I may be,” he said coldly.

The prospect of all that amount of money in the family within the next few days, made his uncle jocular.

“And if before the end of six weeks Hilary loses her fortune I, as your guardian, can forbid you to marry her, here in France, remember, and switch you on to Yvonne after your little spell with the girl of your own choice.”

At that moment it would have given Paul untold pleasure to choke his uncle. That the marriage, although legal in England, was not legal in France, Hilary knew as well as he did. But he was fighting for her honor as best he could with the poor weapons at his disposal. His uncle’s sudden facetious mood was torture to him. He saw no joke in the affair, only a desperate remedy for a desperate state of affairs.

Paul got to his feet, out of the way of his guardian’s thumb, which seemed about to prod him again as the forerunner of some further ill-timed joke.

“Hadn’t we better get to business?” he asked stiffly. “Considering the circumstances I don’t want to waste a minute.”

The young man knew that letters would have to be sent to his other guardians to get their written consent to his marriage, before the first steps towards the civil ceremony could be taken. The least delay fretted him. Where Hilary was concerned every moment seemed precious.

He hustled his uncle into the writing room, and settling him at a table there, put pen, ink and paper before him. Then he returned to the lounge and sat there with a thoughtful expression on his young face, looking at every aspect of the problem before him, adding brick after brick to the fortification he was building around his beloved.

In her bedroom Hilary Fane sat awaiting the dinner gong. She was wearing a simple little evening frock of soft black silk, the only one she had with her. In her haste to be married she had come away with only a suitcase, intending to return to England the moment the ceremony was over, and there think out her future plans. To find six weeks must elapse before she could become Paul’s wife according to French law had upset her arrangements completely. Her inability to cope with the situation had drawn her into a sort of friendliness with him that she had not dreamt of when leaving home. Now, they were fellow conspirators, their heads together, plotting and planning to keep the truth from the world.

For her interview with Paul, Hilary had picked a spot at the far end of the Mountains of the Moors, quite a way from his estate, where it was most unlikely she would meet even the merest acquaintance.

The place was one they had motored to at the beginning of their friendship, their first outing together; an ancient village on a steep hillside, a huddle of red-roofed, tiny houses, so close together that they looked like one building, the streets narrow, winding passages; it was backed by grey crags and green forests; martello towers dotted the surrounding hills; far below, vineyards stretched to a jagged, rocky coast with tiny bays and capes washed by a sapphire sea. Parasol pines, aloes, palms, lemon and orange trees dotted the immediate landscape, and the whole was surrounded by a rampart of broken hills.

On Hilary’s first visit, the village was smothered with mimosa, bright yellow against the dark pines, and the whole place was heady with the perfume of the lovely, graceful, flowering trees.

Her thoughts would wander to that previous visit—their first motoring expedition together. To his supreme joy the boy had been allowed to take the wheel of her car. She could see him now. Paul with his shy smile and delighted eyes, under her instructions learning to run an up-to-date engine; his pleasure when, within a few minutes, he had grasped the new methods; his bliss an hour or so later, when he had mastered the car sufficiently to tear along at thirty miles an hour.

Paul, with a shamed, flushed face, refusing to go into the hotel, stammering excuses, and then confessing he had no money. She, arguing with him, pointing out that, as he had given her lunch, it was only fair that she should be allowed to provide the tea, threatening to have no more meals at his cottage unless he let her make some return.

Afterwards they had scrambled up the sunny hillside, along a rocky path, in and out of groves of fragrant pines and twisted cork oaks. Enchanted hills where olives and almonds grew, and bare, grey fig trees raised their claw-like branches to the blue sky. Great clumps of mimosa flowered like golden pools among the green growths. The salt breeze from the sea was ladened with the breath of rosemary, cistus and wild lavender that sprouted in every crack and crevice.

There were aloes, broom and erica, and patches of prickly pear, the ripe red fruit like blood-stained, stumpy fingers sticking out from the thick, flat, spiky leaves, or lying in rotting heaps on the ground. Everywhere great masses of rock poked through the scented mountains, grey, pink and marble-veined, sparkling in the sunshine as if sprinkled with powdered silver. Hills that Hilary loved because they so resembled Paul’s domain.

Rocks rose up like ruined temples, or tumbled castles with broken battlements and crumbling towers of every fantastic shape: or again they were altars to forgotten gods, sacrificial stones complete, or great smooth, upstanding, single slabs, the Tombstones of Time. For the Mountains of the Moors are older far than France, one of its first two points to rise above the sea in the dim long ago when the world was still in the making. Haunted hills, where the peace that reigned before man’s advent seems still to linger.

On two flat slabs of rock at the top, Paul and she had lain, sunning themselves like a couple of lizards, listening to the sheep bells that tinkled in the valley far beneath.

“I do love these mountains,” she had said, wrinkling her nose and drawing in a deep breath of the incense-ladened air.

Most of Paul’s diminished estate lay within this sunny, scented realm and he had answered feelingly.

“It’s all very well for you to talk. You’ve plenty to chuck about, so you can’t realize what it is to be a pauper. And I don’t see how I can ever be anything else unless I marry money, which I shan’t.”

Then she had gone off into a day dream, conscious of Paul close beside her, his slim brown hands clasped behind his lustrous hair, his strong slender length so graceful on the slab next hers.

She had been so happy that afternoon, her heart full of warm, white love for the boy of sunny Provence who had come so unexpectedly into her life, bringing with him all the romance of the country that bred him, and filling her with a sense of peace and restfulness she had not known for years. A day that seemed so far away now, yet its fragrance would haunt her forever.

Hilary had come back to her one-time friend in a chaos of tearing emotions—hate, shame, anxiety and despair—knowing the only way out of the difficulty was to marry him, horribly conscious he was the master of the situation, in a position to make his own terms.

She had come, judging him by the happenings in the tower, terrified that he might insist on being her husband in more than name. To find he had no intention of taking advantage of her plight, that his only desire was to help as far as he was able, did not fit in with her new estimate of him. Now she felt just utterly bereft and desolate, like one stunned by some great grief. Paul and she divided by the molten stream of his volcanic passion.

The sound of the dinner gong came booming through the hotel, with a suddenness that made her jump, in spite of the fact that she had been expecting it.

That jump of hers annoyed her. It said her nerves were all on edge; a new state of affairs for one who had always prided herself on her self-control.

She got to her feet, conscious her heart was quaking. She dreaded meeting Count Naudin, and was terrified she might not be able to carry off the situation in a natural manner. Yet she knew Paul was right in advising her to stay. With an eye on the future, her immediate flight might have aroused suspicion.

When the last echoes of the gong died away Hilary made her way downstairs, each step reluctant, uncertain as to what might await her, suddenly feeling very dependent on her co-conspirator.

On turning a corner, she saw him in the lounge below talking to a stout, elderly, dapper little man.

The sudden radiance that lighted up the boy’s hollow face said he had seen her too. In a moment he was up the stairs, meeting her with the air of an eager, anxious lover; a rôle Hilary quickly realized he would have no difficulty in playing, even if she found the part irksome.

As they came down together he drew her arm through his, and, after a quick glance at her, took her hand. He knew she was nervous, and the fact filled him with infinite protection. In her “boy” days they had frequently risked their lives together, climbing his mountains, tearing along at breakneck speed in her motor. Now, Hilary, the fearless, was afraid. Afraid that the secret they shared together might leak out. If ever that happened, he vowed to himself, he would tell the whole truth so that the world would know she was in no way to blame.

At the foot of the stairs his guardian was waiting. When they reached there Paul held the cold, shaking, white hand tighter in his own warm, brown one.

“Hilary, this is my uncle Henri,” he said. “And here is your new niece, Uncle, Miss Hilary Fane who has made me the happiest of men.”

She heard a quiver of intense, but suppressed emotion in his voice, and felt the protective grip of the hand that held hers.

“You’re the first of Paul’s relatives I’ve met,” she said, surprised at the cool, composed tone of her voice. “He and I have managed our affair on English lines, without consulting our elders. But I hope you won’t think any the worse of us for that.”

“It gives me the greatest pleasure to meet so beautiful and charming a niece-to-be,” he answered. “Paul’s happiness is all I desire. And it doesn’t matter whether he reaches his goal on French or English lines.”

In spite of herself Hilary thought of the way the boy had had to fight against his mercenary relations, and what he had endured for the sake of an ideal which had made him the easy prey of Yvonne Morelli’s lies and his own volcanic heritage.

Although he had heard and read a good deal about Hilary during the days of her mysterious disappearance and its sensational sequel, he had never seen her before.

She did not strike him as the fickle creature his nephew had depicted, but as a remarkably cool, calm, collected young woman who knew her own mind, and who was quite capable of managing her own affairs, and Paul’s too, if necessary.

He saw his post of family adviser vanishing. What was more, he recognized her as a type that would not succumb to flattery and compliments, who would treat with amused disdain all amorous males except the lucky one she had set her heart upon.

Count Naudin did not exactly like Hilary, but he had a sudden and vast respect for her. During those prospective visits to Rochefallain on which all his future comfort hung, he knew he would have to live up to the highest in him if he were to get on with its English chatelaine—in fact, he would have to set about a rather tardy reformation.

In his very best manner he started talking to the girl. Paul, however, heard a slightly strained note in her replies, and cut short the conversation.

“I’m sure Hilary is ready for her dinner,” he said. “I know I am. Come along, Carissima,” he finished tenderly.

Tucking her arm through his again, he led the way upstairs to the dining-room, knowing that food would gag his uncle for the time being.

Thanks to Paul’s efforts the meal passed off agreeably. Count Naudin, his attention divided between his food and the young couple, decided that if he were his nephew he would have preferred the infatuated Yvonne to this cool, unruffled young woman who favored her obviously devoted fiancé with nothing warmer than an occasional calm little smile. No wonder the boy felt his hold on her was precarious and wanted to make sure of her at the earliest possible moment!

Paul had always been peculiar where women were concerned, keeping all amorous females at bay—a break-off from his forebears. So perhaps this English iceberg appealed to his esthetic taste. One thing, being in love was teaching him humility, a quality that had not been noticeable in him heretofore. All the time he watched the girl with humble, adoring eyes, and, with a diffidence that he had never shown towards his own relations, waited for her to speak and hung on her slightest word.

Throughout the meal Hilary was wondering how she could have managed without her ally. In an unobtrusive and skilful way he kept Count Naudin’s attention and conversation off her. She was amazed that he could be so clever in some ways and yet so stupid in others, and forgot his upbringing, which had left him only inherited talent and taught him nothing of the modern world. Also she had to admit that during the meal he used neither endearment nor caress more than was necessary to keep up their pose.

When dinner was over they went back to the lounge for coffee and liqueurs. As Hilary sipped hers, her mind was still on Paul.

He looked so thin and ill. He was not fit for the long ride back to his cottage, forty miles at least, with only a heap of straw to rest on at the end of it.

“You don’t look equal to that long ride back, Paul,” she said presently. “Hadn’t you better spend the night here?”

“I’m all right, Carissima,” he said, putting a caressing hand on her shoulder. “You’ve given me my life back.”

“But think of the long ride you had this morning. Besides, I want you to see me off to-morrow.”

Hilary did not exactly want him to see her off, but she wanted some excuse so as to keep him from returning to his refuge. In a vague, gnawing way his state of health worried her.

“Of course I won’t go back if I can be of the least use to you,” he said quickly. “When I left this morning I . . . I never imagined you would want me to stay,” he went on, his voice suddenly shaky. “So I never brought a thing with me.”

“I can lend you pyjamas and soap and things,” his uncle volunteered quickly, anxious that Hilary should have her way.

“And I can give you a toothbrush, the first present from the bride to the bridegroom,” she said gaily, with a desire to appear normal, “then you won’t get a name for being savage as well as ‘volcanic.’ ”

Paul felt she was giving him a well deserved hit. A look of suppressed suffering came to his face.

“If you’ll excuse me I’ll go and book a room,” he said in a strained voice.

“Paul hates to be reminded of the volcanic strain in his family,” he remarked when the young man was out of earshot. “Once or twice in the annals of the Laurients it has resulted in tragedy.”

She ought to have remembered all the hot blood that ran in his veins. She ought to have seen the passion and fire that lurked behind the velvet of his eyes. On learning who he really was she ought to have said she was a girl, ought to have got Mrs. Selby to act as chaperon at their meetings. With her in the background she, Hilary, could still have done pretty much as she liked, but the fact of an elderly married woman behind her would have conformed with the ideas of his country and kind, and satisfied the touch of the oriental that was in his family. With but the merest shadow of a chaperon over her, he would never have believed those lies.

She had been so fond of the simple, lovable boy Paul, so infatuated with the handsome Andreani, so busy getting into step with Marius the haughty Roman, that, now, she realized that she had quite overlooked the wild and passionate Casimir.

All at once Hilary felt very tired, as if the two forces continually arguing within her were tearing her to pieces.

“I think I’ll go upstairs now,” she said presently. “I hadn’t a wink of sleep last night, and if I stay here much longer I shall start yawning. And that won’t be much of a compliment to Paul,” she finished, favoring him with one of her cool little smiles.

He knew she was worn out with the events of the day, and the effort of keeping up her pose before his uncle.

After saying good-night to Count Naudin, Hilary slipped her arm through Paul’s and turned towards the stairs. Once they were out of sight of the lounge, however, she drew away from him and continued her journey a step or so ahead.

Without issuing any invitation for him to enter, she disappeared into her sitting-room. Paul came to a halt outside, wondering if she would remember the small gift she had promised him, lingering in the hope of a further word.

A few moments later Hilary came to the door, a small, long, sealed packet in her hand.

“Don’t be too hard on me, Carissima,” he said in a supplicating voice. “I didn’t understand.”

It had always been on his lips in the tower, and to hear it now cut her like a knife.

“I never want to hear you mention love. Good-night,” she said in a chilly voice, holding out the little package.

Under his uncle’s eye she had been so kind to him that he would not let himself believe it was all acting.

“I never had a friend until I met you, Hilary. Won’t you give me back a bit of our friendship? I don’t deserve it, I know, but . . . but you’ve always been so generous and understanding,” he said, his voice full of pleading.

Where he was concerned Hilary was beginning to see she was still understanding, and also, if she were not careful, she would be generous too. But pride would not let her even contemplate that love could be so understanding, so generous as to forgive a sin like his.

“I must play a part before other people. I hope you are not going to take advantage of it when we are alone.”

All evening he had fought for self-restraint. She was so dear to him that every moment he wanted to touch and caress her. Their position had given him every opportunity, yet he had not abused the chances his uncle’s presence had brought.

He was on the verge of pointing this out as one very small item to his credit. Then he wondered anew how he could be so mad as to expect any consideration from her, and, choking the words back, he tried to smile.

Hilary knew his thoughts were on her “boy” days, when she had deceived him so thoroughly.

After the manner of his class and kind he would have taken her hand and kissed it on parting, but she gave him no chance.

Although Hilary went to bed, she did not go to sleep. She lay awake wishing that the fact of Paul’s penitence and remorse was not written so clearly all over him, touching her heart in spite of all efforts, and wondering what she was going to do about it all.

Three days later Hilary was still thinking over the situation. She was sitting in the lounge of her London club. Within an hour Paul was due to arrive at Victoria Station, and the next morning they were to be married.

On parting with him in France, she had given him the address of a small, first-class hotel in London, of the old-fashioned variety, where her mother stayed during her brief and infrequent visits to Town. She had said she would come in and see him during the evening, and coach him for his part of the ceremony.

Hilary sat with her gaze fixed on her left hand. On the third finger was a ring with one large diamond.

In it she saw their parting. Paul and she motoring to Toulon to pick up her train there, neither of them saying a word, each acutely conscious of the other. On arriving at the station, his delight at being allowed to take upon himself the business of porters, platforms and trains; all matters she was far more capable of dealing with than he was; yet something within her would not let her tell him so.

Paul sitting beside her in the railway carriage, watching her askance, twisting his worn beret in thin, nervous hands. His sudden look of determination when he produced from somewhere about his shabby person a little bunch of wild lavender held together by a diamond ring, and laid it on her knee.

In the old days she had loved the plant that grew so freely on his mountains. When they first met it was just coming into flower, and if she saw a specially fine head she had pounced on it and put it in the lapel of her coat, much to his amusement, for to him it was only the merest of weeds.

The wild lavender had blossomed and faded since Paul and she first met, but he had remembered her love for it. He must have been up very early that morning and scoured the hills to get the tiny bouquet, each sprig flawless. Only in the highest and coolest spots would it now be flowering in such perfection.

In pride and pain she would have thrust his gift back on him; then she remembered that during the brief days preceding her marriage an engagement ring would be very useful to show her friends in England. It would pave the way for her, as it were.

Wondering if he had thought of this she cast a glance at him. He was watching her furtively, as if dreading his gift might be thrust back on him—a look that turned to relief when she let the ring and flowers stay where he had placed them.

He had lingered beside her until she had had to hustle him from the carriage, fearing that he might stay until the train actually started and get hurt in jumping off.

Paul with his worn young face looking up at her from the platform, looking at her as if she were his heaven. Her cold little nod when the train started. Her sure knowledge that he would be standing there until the train was out of sight, hoping, praying, she would give him a wave from the carriage window, which pride had not allowed her to do.

On arriving in London his ring had been her great ally. She had worn it all day long, flaunted it in fact. Within twenty-four hours most of her set knew she was engaged to some man she had met during her last journey abroad and was going to marry him by special license before the week was out. And that Jack Selby and his sister were to be the witnesses.

Those intervening days had been trying ones for Hilary. She hoped her mother would not hear the news. She knew the latter would not approve of a hurried ceremony in a registry office. But would want her daughter to be married in the local church, a leisurely performance, taking time that, in her panic, the girl felt she could not afford.

Hilary had had no intention of going to the station to meet Paul. But now, as she sat brooding in her club, a new fear was slowly coiling around her.

He was not used to traveling. Until now he had never been further afield than Toulon.

At the mere idea the feeling of panic that she had experienced several times during the last few weeks began to creep over her. She could not endure the suspense until the evening. She must go, now. At once. To the station. And make sure he had really arrived.

With a sort of nervous haste, Hilary left the club. Hailing a taxi, she promised the driver a handsome tip if he could get to Victoria Station within ten minutes.

The Continental express was not quite due when she arrived. Telling the driver to wait, she took up her stand on the platform at a spot where she could miss nobody.

It was a raw and cheerless day, with a bitter wind and driving rain, wintry as May often can be in England. Inside a pretty fur coat Hilary shivered, partially from cold, partially from this new worry.

After a few minutes, with a queer sinking at her heart, she realized Paul was not among the passengers.

She took herself to task severely about her nervousness. As a stranger in a strange land it was most unlikely he would be aboard the first train. Only seasoned travelers managed that: people like herself who knew all about booking seats and getting easily through the customs, matters Paul could not be aware of.

In a fever of anxiety and self-reproach she awaited the arrival of the second train.

She ought to have gone to Dover to meet him. She ought not to have left a boy like him, wholly ignorant of the world, her language and the ways of her country, to find his way up to London alone.

After what seemed an endless quarter of an hour, the second train came steaming in.

Among the crowd was a tall young man in a cloth beret. A black muffler was wound round his throat, the ends tucked into the buttoned up coat of a blue serge suit.

Paul from Provence, looking very alien, his hollow face blue with cold, his teeth chattering, his thin suit blowing about his emaciated frame, his eyes bewildered, as he stood alone amidst a babble of strange tongues, a small suitcase in his hand.

There he was! Looking absolutely frozen! Coming straight from his warm sunny land to England without even an overcoat! And he must have given at least a hundred pounds for that ring!

Knowing every article in the oak chest with “Paul Laurient” carved on it, Hilary guessed he was wearing only woven cotton underclothes a shift or two of which, crudely patched and darned, remained from the days before the rebellion.

His lost, bewildered, helpless air, his utter inability to look after himself, made something sprout in the void of her heart, the seed set by his obvious penitence and remorse. A sort of responsibility towards him seized her. In worldly knowledge she knew he was only about fifteen years old to her fifty.

It was all very well to blame him for what had happened, that little voice inside of her suddenly shouted—seizing, as it had a way of doing, every opportunity when pride was not on the watch—but if she hadn’t played the fool, he would still be an innocent boy, striving after his ideals in the midst of peaceful, scented mountains. If she hadn’t put temptation in his way, he would not have eaten of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. He, now, would not be this shivering wraith with the suffering eyes, that she had dragged out, all burnt up, from a hell of penitence.

Quickly she went forward, her principal feeling that she must tear off her warm fur coat and wrap it around him.

“I never dared to hope you’d come and meet me, Carissima,” he said, in his joy using the forbidden word.

Like many of his nation Paul had pictured England as a place of almost incessant rain and fog, but he did not think that in May it would be quite so icy. As a matter of fact, he was hoarding his small fortune, so as to put off as long as possible the humiliating day when he would have to use Hilary’s money.

During his short, strange life Paul had frequently asked himself this question and had found no satisfactory answer.

Hilary said nothing more. She hurried him towards the waiting taxi. In spite of his efforts to the contrary, she bundled him in first, her only desire to get him out of the biting wind. Then she gave her instructions to the driver.

When the car started Paul had no eyes for the wonders of the London he had once so desired to visit. His whole attention was on Hilary, whom he at once noticed was worried and anxious.

He was afraid their secret had leaked out, hence her presence at the station and agitated manner.

“You’ll get your death of cold in that thin suit. Why on earth hadn’t you the sense to buy an overcoat and some warm underclothing.”

Suddenly it dawned on Paul her worry was for him, and the fact brought a look of strange, glad surprise to his hollow face.

“I’d like to know what else you had to do,” she said crossly. “Your guardians manage all your affairs. You haven’t had to dash round like me, and do everything yourself.”

In his desire to do only what he thought she would approve of, Paul had had hardly a free moment. His life since their parting in Toulon had been one long battle with his relatives, clamoring for a marriage settlement on him out of her money, and an elaborate cathedral wedding in Paris to follow the compulsory civil ceremony.

He refused to let Hilary be approached on the subject of money, finally bringing his guardians to heel by threatening to give the girl up unless he were allowed to have her on his own terms—a threat he had no intention of carrying out, but which he knew would stop their clamoring. He insisted that the French ceremony should be as brief and quiet as the English one, realizing only too well that Hilary would want no show of any sort.

“I suppose it was stupid of me not to think that it might be cold here,” he said quietly.

“Stupid! I call it criminal. If you get pneumonia and die, what’s going to happen to me?”

To Hilary it seemed an age before the taxi drew up outside the hotel. When it did, she hopped out smartly, said a quick word to the porter, and hurried Paul into the building in the shortest possible space of time.

Quickly she took him in there, and told him not to move from the fire until she came back.

Going out, she ordered whisky, hot water and lemon to be taken to him immediately, and a scalding bath to be prepared at once, followed by plenty of hot tea and toasted muffins. She ordered a fire to be lighted at once in his bedroom, and made a journey up to it herself to see that the sheets had been properly aired. Hot water bottles, really hot, were to be put in his bed before he retired. And once in bed, more hot whisky and lemon was to be given to him.

Had Count Naudin been present during those few minutes, he would have been more than ever convinced that Hilary needed no one to manage her affairs.

With a wry face Paul was sipping down the first dose of hot whisky. From childhood he had drunk the light wines of his mountains, the pure juice of the grape, bright pink and gleaming gold, and containing very little more alcohol than cider. This biting spirit was something new. Like a stream of fire it went down his unaccustomed gullet, taking his breath, but also taking some of the chill out of his bones.

Hilary halted at his side, and laid a lingering hand on his sleeve, even before a waiter remembering her pose.

“Brown speaks French, Paul. I’ve told him to take charge of you. And bring you some tea here directly you’ve had a hot bath. If you are careful you may escape with nothing worse than a bad cold. I shall be back in about an hour, and shall expect to find you sitting before the fire here, and looking not quite so frozen.”

“Brown, show the marquis to his room. See he has everything he needs. And see, also, that this fire is kept well stoked up.”

Paul was taken to a large bedroom, where a cheerful fire already blazed, and presently was indulging in a luxury he had not known for years—a really hot bath.

Meanwhile Hilary was driving towards a high-class store where she was known. On reaching there, however, she entered the department where men’s wants were catered to.

There she bought woolen underwear, a quilted dressing-gown, flannel pyjamas, a thick tweed overcoat, a leather underjacket and cashmere socks. All these she ordered to be sent out to the waiting taxi, deciding that on the following day she would take Paul and get him measured for the various garments his position demanded.

Presently, with her purchases, she returned to the hotel. She had the packages sent upstairs, and then made her way to the smoke-room.

With the débris of a good tea beside him, Paul was sitting in a deep chair before the fire, looking, now, quite warm and comfortable.

Her entrance brought him sharply to his feet. His correct demeanor towards her had a way of hurting. This perversity she could not have explained. After all that had happened in the tower, it seemed impossible that he could have any respect left for her. Yet it was there in every look and action, a deference amounting to awe. As if she were set apart from the rest of the world and sacred; in spite of the fact that he had dragged her through the mud and mire of his mad passion.

“I’ve been out and got you a few warm things,” she said. “They are in your room. See you remember to put them on in the morning.”

Tortured, he wondered what her opinion of him must be if she imagined he would allow her to pay his bills.

With a hand that trembled with the intensity of the pain within him, he felt in some inner pocket and produced a case of English notes. What he was going to do when his own supply of money ran out, he had not yet considered.

“I can’t let you pay my bills,” he said in a strained voice, holding the case towards her. “Please take what I owe you.”

“The bills aren’t paid yet. They’re being sent in your name to my mother’s address, and you can settle them at your leisure.”

Again he had misjudged her. He deserved no consideration from her, yet he had received it. She was Rêve d’Or, pure gold, through and through. Of such rare and precious metal that she did not even try and hit back now that he was down, although she had every reason for doing so.

One morning Lady Fane was in her garden, basket and scissors in hand, cutting flowers for her vases, when the butler approached her, a telegram on the salver he carried.

On reading the message, she gave a smothered gasp, and stood staring at it in a bewildered manner.

“Was married this morning. Expect me this evening with a strange young man. We shall arrive in time for dinner.

“Hilary, now Marquise de Rochefallain.”

A few days ago, all of a hurry, the girl had gone back to France, saying she would return within a week. With an aching heart, her mother had seen her go, not expecting to see her again for months, fearing that a whirl of mad gaiety would swamp her once more. Hilary had kept her promise, but in a manner the elder woman had not been prepared for.

From the French paper Dakin had forwarded, Lady Fane was aware that Hilary had known the young marquis before her mishap. Occasionally she had wondered if he had anything to do with the girl’s changed demeanor. As Hilary had not confided in her, she had not probed into the matter. The girl had always scoffed at love, and by too much curiosity her mother had feared to injure that delicate plant, if it were sprouting.

She wished Hilary had not married the man of her choice quite so hastily. In Lady Fane’s idea it was freakish, and she dreaded having to explain her daughter’s outlandish behavior to friends and servants.

So far, she had always managed to find some good excuse for her child’s peculiar ways. Now she breathed a silent prayer that this might be the last time she had to find excuses, that Love’s Anchor would hold her daughter steady in the future.

As she gazed at the message, with veiled curiosity the butler watched her. He considered himself an authority on all that happened in the house, and he could think of nothing to account for the telegram.

“No bad news, I hope, my lady?” he asked respectfully, hoping to learn the contents.

At his voice she pulled herself together, knowing she must treat this last escapade of Hilary’s as she had treated all previous ones—as if it were nothing unusual.

“No. No, Turner,” she said slowly. “Very good news indeed. From Miss Hilary.”

“Yes. To-day. In time for dinner. And she’s bringing her husband with her.”

The stunned surprise in his voice made her laugh, a gentle, silvery laugh with a slightly forced note in it that the man was too amazed to notice.

“Miss Hilary was married this morning to the Marquis of Rochefallain,” she explained. “We belong to a past generation, you and I, Turner,” she went on. “We can’t keep pace with the young people of to-day. The mode of the moment is to marry secretly, and then send telegrams to amaze all one’s friends and relations. And as you know, Miss Hilary is always up to date. But she hasn’t surprised me quite so much as she thought, and I dare say, hoped. I suspected her of devoting a good deal of thought to the young marquis when she came back after her accident.”

Turner was annoyed with himself for not having put two and two together and guessed what the young lady was on with when she so suddenly darted back to France. This made him try to pretend the marriage was no surprise to him either.

“If I may take the liberty of quoting the servants’ hall, my lady, there we always called that young French gentleman ‘Miss Hilary’s Marquis.’ And it seems we were not far wrong.”

Lady Fane knew Turner felt that his reputation as an authority on all that happened in her house was at stake. Now, to his kind in the neighborhood, he would pretend his young mistress’s marriage was no surprise, and the fallacy would spread upwards from servant to master.

“Why did you connect the young marquis with Miss Hilary?” she asked, glad an awkward corner had been turned so easily.

“As a matter of fact, my lady, Dakin always said he was sweet on—I mean very fond of Miss Hilary. He was so terribly upset about her accident. And, if I may say so, in spite of being so up to date, Miss Hilary isn’t one who would pick a husband in a hurry. I mean to say, although she’s such a modern young lady, she’s not one who would be married this year and divorced next, like so many nowadays. And my opinion is, she came back here, right away from the Marquis, to think the matter over quietly. Dakin says he’s a most charming young gentleman, tall and strong and very handsome.”

With the friendliness that his ten years in her service entitled him to, Lady Fane smiled at her butler.

“The little surprise that Miss Hilary has planned for us all has fallen rather flat, hasn’t it, Turner?”

“Well, that’s that, as Miss Hilary would say. Tell Hildreth to get the South room ready for the young people. And tell Cook I want a little talk with her when I’ve finished my flowers.”

When the man left, absentmindedly Lady Fane snipped a blossom here and another there, lingering over the task; so that when she went indoors the sensation would have died down somewhat.

Without doubt the young Frenchman was responsible for Hilary’s sudden reformation. He had dragged her out of that horrible whirlpool of mad gaiety into which in her pain she had plunged, rescuing her before its wild whirl had swamped her entirely.

Along a highroad in one of the Home Counties, a little silver car was going at a moderate speed. At the wheel sat a young man in a thick tweed overcoat. A woolen muffler swathed his neck. His neat hands were in fur-backed driving gloves, and when he leant forward a glimpse of a leather under jacket showed. With eyes that were a trifle heavy he was watching the road, keeping carefully on the left hand side.

For Paul the day had been the strangest, saddest, and in a way the happiest of his life. A happiness based solely on the fact that, now, he would be with Hilary always, and in a position to prove that he was not the savage she believed him to be.

That morning a few words said in an office-like room had made her his wife according to English law.

There was Jack Selby slapping him on the back; a slap that in his present weak condition almost sent him flying, and which, moreover, annoyed him considerably. People were not in the habit of taking such liberties with the Marquis of Rochefallain.

“Well, old chap, you’ve managed in three months what I’ve been trying to pull off for three years.”

“What is that?” Paul asked, a trifle bewildered by the chaos of feeling that surged within him, and the new world into which he had been so suddenly plunged.

Until that moment the boy had had no idea that Jack Selby had ever been his rival. A demon of wild jealousy suddenly surged within him, all the more alive and gnawing because he knew only too well she would not have married him had there been any other course left open to her.

Some of this jealousy showed on his face and roused the teasing spirit in Selby.

“But I shan’t give up hope,” he went on. “Nowadays marriage is merely the preliminary to divorce. My turn will come in a year or so.”

Never before had Paul met that pastime peculiar to the English, known as “ragging”. But he knew he had no hold on Hilary, and also that Jack Selby, whom at that moment he hated, was very good to look upon.

He was weak and tired and overwrought, his head thick and hot and full of an unaccustomed cold. Knowing nothing of Englishmen he feared Selby might deliberately set out to entice the girl from him.

“If you try to steal Hilary from me I shall kill you,” he said in a fierce whisper.

“Hello, Hilary,” he called in French, “your young savage is threatening to kill me because I pointed out that marriage is but the first step towards divorce.”

Hilary was signing the register. She swung round sharply, and glanced from one to the other of the young men, seeing the teasing look on Selby’s face and the smothered anger on Paul’s.

She knew Jack Selby’s methods. In a moment she realized he had been trying to make a fool of Paul. It seemed so unfair to set on the boy when he was right away from all he knew and understood, a stranger in a strange land, that the sense of chivalry within her made her take up arms in his defence.

“I’m glad to see Paul is making fun of you, acting the hot-blooded Latin for your benefit. Pulling your leg when you thought you were pulling his,” she said quickly, in French also.

Paul’s sudden seethe of jealousy died down as quickly as it had arisen. Askance he looked at Hilary, wondering whether she knew the truth or not. But her face told him nothing.

Since becoming aware of her sex, it seemed to him he was an utter stranger to himself, behaving in all sorts of mad ways that once he would not have deemed himself capable of. She had tapped wild and unknown streams within him, which bore him hither and thither, landing him in unexpected and tormenting places, making his life a hell, but a hell he would not have crawled out of, if it meant losing her.

Knowing Hilary’s capacity for masking her thoughts and feelings, he dreaded the moment when they would be alone, for fear she should take him to task for his foolish outburst. He did not realize that somewhat late in the day, she was trying to get into focus with Casimir, but he was determined to keep an eye on himself and not act in such an absurd manner again.

On leaving the registry office they got into her little car, Hilary at the wheel.

“I’d better drive, Paul,” she said quietly. “It’s quite different here in England. And you don’t know the police signals.”

“To prevent the happy bridegroom spending his first night in jail. The bride left all alone and weeping. ‘He cometh not’ and so forth. Eh, Hilary?” Selby put in quickly, leering at her in a manner that left her wondering how she had endured him for three days, let alone three years.

Trembling, Paul waited for some scathing remarks about his folly, but none were forthcoming. Then for a brief space he forgot his troubles, as in breathless admiration he watched the girl steer her car through what was to him a bewildering maze of traffic.

There followed a round of shopping on his behalf. Lunch at a fashionable restaurant. To his joy, she raised no demur when he paid, merely looking through the items with him, and helping him with his change. Then an afternoon of fitting and measuring: a further inroad on his means which he grudged, considering it was all for himself, yet he knew that, now, he could not go about with only one suit to his name.

He rapidly grew to hate the sight of a man’s shop. But he endured without complaint because it was her decree. He wished his head were not so thick and buzzing, making him appear more stupid than he really was. He wished his throat were not so sore, occasionally turning his voice into a croak. He wished he did not sneeze so frequently, for that always made Hilary glance at him sharply with an air as if she might grow sarcastic at his expense. He wished his new underclothing did not scrub and irritate so, making him on edge bodily, as his sin against her kept him on edge mentally and morally.

Never before had Paul worn wool next his skin. In rich days his underclothes had been silk, in poor ones, cotton. Now, it seemed that for his sins Hilary had thrust him into a hair shirt, that chafed him continually. Yet, because it was her wish, he endured without complaint.

When the shopping was finished, tea followed. And when it was paid for Hilary addressed him on a matter that had nothing to do with the menu, change, or his wardrobe, to which, so far, their conversation had been principally confined.

“You must understand that I’ve a more difficult part to play before my mother than I had when we were with your uncle. You see, she knows how I behave with people I like, and he didn’t.”

Paul grasped what she meant. Before her mother she would have to appear much more in love with him than had been necessary when with his guardian.

“I know what you mean,” he said. “And I promise you I won’t take advantage of it.”

“You can drive now if you like,” she said. “I’m a bit tired. But go carefully, and remember to keep always to the left.”

Hilary had had a trying day, apart from anything to do with her marriage. She awoke with a bad headache that had persisted in spite of aspirin, and now she felt both sick and unusually tired. She wanted a little rest to prepare for the coming interview with her mother.

Paul had noticed how fatigued she looked, but he hardly dared say or do anything for fear of making his undesired presence more obvious.

“I’d like to drive. Why didn’t you speak sooner? I thought you were looking rather fagged.”

His words confirmed what a guilty conscience made her suspect—that her condition was beginning to tell on her. Before long people must guess. Before the French ceremony perhaps!

“Do you expect me to come through a time like the last two months and not look tired?” she asked crossly.

“None of my relations know you, so they won’t be able to notice any difference in you,” he said in a soothing tone.

“What about your uncle?” she snapped, now regretting she had stayed to meet Count Naudin. “You made me see him.”

“You were looking awfully white and weary after your journey,” he replied. “Much more so than you do now. Besides—”

By the time the French wedding took place, they would have been married nearly six weeks. There would be nothing untoward then if people did suspect things.

Hilary jammed the brakes on and stopped the car with a grate and jerk. That Paul blushed, now, if he got anywhere near the cause that had brought them together again, annoyed her. It did not fit in with her new estimate of him. She wanted to despise him utterly, yet she could not, because he was so very conscious of the sin he had committed.

Long before dinner time Lady Fane was in the drawing-room awaiting her daughter’s arrival. Every motor that came along the by-road skirting her grounds made her all aflutter. At about six o’clock, a car turned into the drive. Rising quickly she went across to a big round window. What she saw sent her hastily towards the lounge hall.

Another had been listening as intently as she had. Heavy curtains draped a wide vestibule where the entrance was situated. These were now drawn well aside, and at the wide-open front door Turner stood at attention.

By the time she reached there the little silver car had drawn up by the shallow steps leading into the deep porch, and Hilary, all long legs, smiles and excitement, was jumping out.

For once the mother had no eyes for her daughter. All her attention was on the girl’s companion. She had a glimpse of a tall, dark, handsome, haggard boy, to whom she took an immediate fancy, when Hilary’s arms were around her neck, and Hilary’s fresh young lips on hers.

“Hello, Mother, here I am. Back within the week. And this is my young man. Will he do?”

“He’ll have to, my darling. It’s too late for me to raise objections now.”

Although Hilary belonged to a type Paul had never met before, in dealing with a past generation he knew his own class and kind. This frail little lady with her sweet worn face and silver hair he would have known for a gentlewoman any where; her French counterpart had so frequently come into his very young days.

In the presence of the mother he was more than ever conscious of his tragic estimate of the daughter. Oppressed by the burden of his sin he hung nervously in the background.

“Look him over well, Mumsie,” she said. “Don’t tell me I’ve been and gone and made a mistake. For I really did try and pick something I thought would please you.”

Holding out her hand Lady Fane smiled gently at the boy, liking him all the more because he appeared shy and retiring.

Aware she was scanning him closely, rather slowly he straightened himself, afraid to meet the gaze of a mother whose daughter he had so deeply wronged.

The look of pathos and pleading in his eyes went to her heart. He seemed to be asking her not to judge him too harshly because he was a foreigner and poor.

“Why, Hilary, I’d no idea you were going to give me such a nice new son,” she said, a little break of happiness in her voice.

“It’s no use saying pretty things to Paul in English. He doesn’t understand a word. Do you, darling?” she finished, seizing one of his arms in a tight hug.

Although Paul had very little idea of what was being said he knew Lady Fane had taken a fancy to him. This steadied his nerve. Even the mother’s eyes had not seen the sin he felt was branded all over him.

He also knew a part must be played, and played well, to deceive this beautiful old lady who had received him so kindly.

He glanced at Lady Fane with the shy, grave smile her daughter had once found so fascinating; and then at Hilary, all his love for her in his eyes. She smiled back at him, trying not to see the wealth of affection, or the pain, pathos and pleading that lay beneath.

Then she started talking again, hardly knowing what she said; her only desire to get the situation over quickly and naturally.

“We must take great care of my young man, Mother,” she went on. “There aren’t any more left like him. He’s the only specimen of his kind, is Paul Andreani Marius Casimir Laurient, seventeenth Marquis of Rochefallain. He’s had the rottenest time. Working like a galley slave, until I came along and kidnapped him. And on the journey to England he’s been and given himself a dreadful cold, the first thing he’s given himself for years.”

All along, the older woman had been thinking how thin and ill the boy looked, and this last piece of news filled her with alarm. Quickly she turned towards Turner, who was lingering in the background to help Paul off with his overcoat.

With a loving, anxious air she slipped her arm through Paul’s and drew him from the vestibule into the lounge hall, and towards the fire smouldering on the hearth there.

Badly Hilary needed a few minutes to recover from the tension of the meeting, so she seized this opportunity.

“Look after him, Mother, whilst I run the car round. I shan’t be a moment.”

She blew a kiss to Paul and was down the steps and into the car in what seemed a whirl of happy excitement.

Once in the garage, however, she stayed thinking over the happenings of the last few minutes.

All along Hilary had known they would be given the South room. It was a large apartment, quite thirty feet long by twenty wide, with a door at one end leading into a bathroom; the recognized guest chamber for married couples. She dared not suggest other arrangements for fear of arousing suspicion. She had come intending to stay only one night: a night to be spent sitting up in a chair reading and perhaps—horrible thought—having to keep Paul at bay. Then she was going a motor tour in the West of England. Once they were alone no acting would be necessary, and they could occupy separate rooms without comment.

Now, Hilary was realizing she would have to change her plans. Her mother had fallen in love with Paul on sight. If she dared mention leaving there would be a scene. Her mother would beg, entreat her to stay, weep even. The girl knew she could produce no really feasible reason for rushing away the next morning. If possible, she would have avoided the visit altogether. But to dash off to the other end of England without first letting her mother see Paul was more than she dared do.

She would have to stay a week at least. For a week she would have to make love to Paul all day and be shut up with him all night.

In spite of his protests Hilary had not much faith in her one-time friend. She was horribly afraid another wild storm of passion might arise, and was still too stunned to realize that he now regarded her in quite another light from what he had in the tower.

On re-entering the lounge she found it empty. Throwing off her hat and coat she made for the drawing-room, quite expecting her mother would comment on her long absence, but having her answer all ready if this should occur.

On a couch drawn up before the fire Lady Fane sat with her son-in-law, holding one of his hands, so engrossed in him that Hilary doubted if her mother saw her enter. But Paul did, and immediately he sprang to his feet.

“What a charming boy he is!” Lady Fane cried in English. “Why didn’t you tell me all about him?”

“What a good thing I got him first,” she said, “or he might have been my step-father instead of my husband.”

There was a gay note in her mirth that Hilary had not heard for years, that had vanished with the death of the last of her sons.

“You ridiculous child! But why didn’t you say you had this treat in store for me?”

There were certain matters Hilary wanted to tell her mother—part of the campaign of lies Paul and she had arranged between them—and she decided this was the opportunity.

“Because, Mumsie, I hadn’t quite made up my mind,” she said rather slowly.

“If I’d been a young girl I should have made up my mind the moment I saw him.”

As Hilary searched round for an adequate reply, she took a cigarette from a box on a table near, and lighting it, leant back against the chimney piece, looking very boyish in her variegated sweater and short, plain tweed skirt.

“But, darling, you belonged to a more susceptible generation,” she said after a moment’s thought. “And you weren’t an heiress. You hadn’t been dodging fortune-hunters for years, as I have.”

“A glance ought to have shown you the boy was no fortune hunter. I’m surprised at you, Hilary. And you pride yourself on your knowledge of the world!”

There was a touch of indignation in Lady Fane’s voice. Hilary heard it, and was more than ever certain that Paul was going to be her mother’s idol.

Slipping her arm through his, she seated herself on the couch and at the same time drew him down into his old place beside her mother. Between his lips she placed her cigarette, and with her arm still linked in his, leant across and answered the older woman.

“All is not brass that glitters, even in these artificial days. There’s still just a chance it may be pure gold. But it’s not easy to tell the difference unless one puts it to the test.”

Although Paul did not understand what was being said, Hilary’s attitude told him she was fighting for her honor—and his.

“You must have put him through a pretty severe test to have made such a wreck of him. Gossip led me to expect a great strong lad. Not a wraith of a boy who looks as if a breath of wind would blow him away.”

Although Paul was still the ghost of himself, Hilary knew he was not quite the skeleton she had interviewed four days ago.

“Darling Paul! Perhaps I was a bit hard on him. But I was so afraid of making a mistake. I didn’t want to be landed for life with the spurious article.”

In an affectionate manner she glanced at him. Had it been natural that look would have brought all his love gushing over her in a soft, warm, gentle flood. But he knew only too well she was acting, and he must help her to the best of his ability.

Putting the cigarette down on an ashtray near by, he took her hand, holding it in close, careful captivity between both of his.

That clasp of his always gave Hilary courage. That it should do so, annoyed her. After all she had endured from him she tried hard to think there could not be any comfort or consolation in his touch. Yet these two qualities lingered, in spite of everything.

“Paul proposed to me just before—my accident,” she went on, suddenly fluent. “But I refused him. You see, Mother, his guardians were so obviously out for the money that Paul got a smear or two of the tar from their brush. There was another heiress in the running, and I thought ‘Well, if it’s only my money he’s after, he’ll take her once I’m out of the way’. Then I heard that he wouldn’t even look at her, and was fretting himself to death over me.”

Picking up the cigarette Paul had put down, Hilary had a whiff or two, and once more placed it between his lips.

“On hearing that,” she continued, “I went at once to see if it were really true. And found him looking like a ghost of himself. I was terrified he might slip off the earth if I hadn’t got him where I could keep an eye on him continually. So I arranged for a marriage at once, here, in London. So that accounts for your short notice, Mumsie.”

Slipping from the couch, Hilary seated herself on a floor cushion and leant back against Paul’s knee.

“The child so enjoyed his wedding,” she now remarked, “that he’s arranging for us to have another in Paris in a few weeks’ time.”

Hilary was aware that her mother knew very little about the forms and ceremonies attached to a mixed marriage. But she also knew there might be people ready to tell her. She wanted to prepare the way, at the same time slur over the irregularity as easily as possible.

“You see, Mother, in a case like ours, it’s advisable to be married in France as well as in England. The laws are a bit different over there, and the title and all that has to be considered, so Paul insists on us being married again in his country.”

It was the crucial moment. Inwardly trembling Hilary awaited her mother’s reply.

In a French-English marriage, it is usual to have the two ceremonies within twenty-four hours of each other. The girl feared her mother might want to know why she had not acted in the customary manner: might point out that an eye could be kept on Paul by bringing him straight to her, Lady Fane, instead of marrying him with such freakish haste in London: might say that she considered the matter unseemly, and want to know why Hilary could not have waited and been married in the local church the day before the French ceremony.

But Lady Fane was too much in love with her son-in-law, too grateful to him for having pulled Hilary out of a maelstrom of wickedness, too delighted at having her daughter married to a man of her own class, to give any thought to the irregularity.

“That’s exactly what Paul says. He’s most anxious to get a second noose around me as soon as possible. I believe he’s afraid I shall find some way of wriggling out, unless we go through another performance. And I rather fancy I’m the one who ought to be worrying, because I’m not so sure that he couldn’t repudiate me in his own country if he wanted, unless we have a French marriage as well as an English one.”

Now, if any one pointed out that the English ceremony alone did not make her Paul’s wife according to French law, she knew her mother would answer in this vein:

“You know what Hilary is, so determined and impetuous, carrying all before her. But fortunately Paul thoroughly understood the laws of his own country, and insisted on marrying her again in Paris.”

In a deep chair before a smouldering fire in the library Hilary sat alone, an empty amber cigarette holder between her fingers, on her face a perplexed expression.

Soon after dinner, wanting a little time to herself in order to recover from the tension of the meal, pleading letters to write, she had gone from the drawing-room, leaving her mother and Paul to entertain each other.

Some hours before, when the dressing bell rang, the three of them had gone upstairs together. However, when the corridor was reached, with the excuse that all her evening frocks and Dakin were in her old room, Hilary had left her mother to take Paul to their quarters.

On entering, the two beds, and his own and the girl’s luggage, had brought the problem of the one room before Paul also. He made straight for the inner door, hoping it led into a second chamber as was generally the case in his own country, and that there was a key on the other side so that she could lock it if she desired, and spend a peaceful night, knowing he could not disturb her. Although the boy was now very sure of himself, he knew Hilary could have no faith left in him.

The room had proved to be a bathroom, but he was thankful to find a key which he immediately placed on the bedroom side of the door. Used to roughing it, the fact that he would have to spend the night curled up in a rug on a couple of chairs did not trouble him. His only thought was to make her mind easy.

Having no clothes to change into, his preparations for dinner were limited to washing himself and brushing his hair. Then he hurried back to the drawing-room, hoping Hilary would come in first, so that he could tell her his arrangement, and take one of the many worries off her mind.

Lady Fane appeared before her daughter. Dinner started and was over without his getting an opportunity for a word alone with the girl.

Now, in the library, Hilary sat brooding on a new problem, and in the drawing-room Paul still wrestled with the old one—how to keep their secret from the world.

During the evening it had occurred to him that in some ways the girl’s mother might not be so easily deceived as in others.

Since Hilary’s confession Paul had studied his subject thoroughly. Meeting Lady Fane had made him rearrange his plans somewhat. Where a baby was concerned, it would be difficult to deceive a woman who had had five children. For its mother’s sake the boy hoped his child would have at least one trait peculiar to his race.

South Latin babies are generally very small, at six months old often very little bigger than an English child of half that age. But Paul had read up matters like teething, and knew that on that and similar subjects Hilary’s mother would be an expert, and would judge a child by other things than its size. It would be no use pretending to her that the child was a seven months’ one.

In spite of everything Paul looked forward to his baby. Not only because an heir was so badly needed, but also because he felt it would bring Hilary and himself together again, if within the time he had not managed to win her forgiveness.

As he arranged the future with an eye to Lady Fane’s expert knowledge, in the library Hilary pondered on her new problem and was unable to find an answer.

She knew her mother was going to lavish on Paul all the love she had once given her own sons. Although Lady Fane hated traveling, and had seldom set foot out of England, she had invited herself to Rochefallain, prepared to face long journeys which she detested, and fatigue that always made her ill, for the sake of being with her new son.

Beaming on the young couple Lady Fane had talked openly of her grandchildren, and the joy they would be to her in her old age.

Yet, since leaving the drawing-room, Hilary had made the amazing discovery that she need not have married Paul. The knowledge had left her in a quandary.

Now she was learning the truth of the old saw—a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

All her life she had been a normal, healthy girl, never ailing in any way. She had based her suppositions on her own amateur judgment, not daring to consult either married friend or doctor. She had not taken into consideration such factors as shock, worry, or the weeks of anemia that the deep cut on her head had brought in its train. All things calculated to throw one’s system out of gear.

In a panic she had fled to Paul and married him; a ceremony she certainly would not have gone through had she made her discovery twelve hours sooner.

Now, not only was she married to him according to English law, but he was with her in her mother’s house, her acknowledged and fêted husband!

But for her mother Hilary tried to think she would bundle Paul back to his own country and wash her hands of the whole affair. Without the French ceremony he was free to marry again. As for herself, whether her marriage was really binding or not, she neither knew nor cared. Where she was concerned there could be no other man, so it did not matter.

All evening she had acted her part, pretending to be as much in love with Paul as he obviously was with her. After all she had said and done she could not suddenly change her mind and refuse to go through the French ceremony without giving some excellent reason. And there was none except the truth she dared not tell, for the shock and scandal might kill her mother.

She never would live with him as his wife. Pride made her quite certain of that.

Rochefallain needed sons. Paul had a thousand years behind him. He was the one link between the past and the future. If she refused to be a real wife to him, one of the oldest families in France would die out.

To Hilary the extinction of any long line was a calamity. Merely to read of such a thing happening hurt her.

In her mind’s eye she saw Lady Fane and Paul as they had been all evening—the boy who had known no mother, with the mother who had lost her sons—in love with one another, each anxious to fill in the other’s void.

If she repudiated Paul now, her mother might not get over the shock. She would cling to her new son, not letting him go until she had really learnt the truth.

If the innocent were not to suffer for the guilty she, Hilary, must go on, or her mother’s death might lie at her door.

At that moment Hilary cursed her sense of heritage, her pride, her own folly, her hasty conclusions, Paul’s stupidity and passion, everything that had landed her in this maze.

She tried to think she did not care in the least about Rochefallain. Then she saw it grey against the blue sky, keeping its lonely vigil among the peaceful, scented mountains.

All at once her sons came and looked at her. Three handsome, swarthy boys, whose images had haunted her so frequently in the days before the fall.

As she lounged back in the deep leather chair, with long, slim legs, and in a golden dress, the amber cigarette holder dangling in her inert hand, she looked at them and they looked back at her with wide, velvet eyes and shy smiles of rare fascination.

Never would she forgive him for believing Yvonne Morelli’s lies about her. Never would she overlook what had happened in the tower. He had robbed her of everything but her pride. But even he could not take that from her.

Heedless of the passing time she sat trying to find some way out of the maze, conscious of a new feeling pushing up through her perplexities.

A dog in the manger sense of possession was getting her gradually into its grip.

Paul belonged to her. Out of a host of men she had picked him for her own. If she let him go some other woman would get hold of him.

In spite of herself, mental pictures of Paul with some other girl would come before her. She tried to shut her eyes to them, but they persisted.

In the rebound some awful creature would get hold of him. It always happened. In his pain and despair he would not care what he did. He would go where his guardians pushed him. And they would push him into Yvonne Morelli’s arms!

This aspect was one Hilary had not considered before, and it left her studying her problem more closely than ever.

The door opening stopped her train of thought. She did not look round. The quick, light step on the parquet floor told her who the intruder was.

An intruder Paul must have felt himself to be. With an air as if he would not have dared come without some excellent reason, he halted before her.

To her amazement it was a quarter to eleven. More than an hour and a half since she left the drawing-room! Whilst she had been trying to find a way out of her difficulties the time had just slipped away.

Paul saw her look of dismay, and thought her mind was on the night they had spent together.

“You needn’t worry about the room upstairs,” he said. “I shall take a rug and sleep in the bathroom. There’s a key on your side, and you can lock the door if you wish. But I assure you it won’t be necessary.”

Tall, slender and graceful he stood before her, without fidgeting in any way, his arms hanging loose, his hands never seeking his pockets, yet looking in no way stiff or unnatural. Only those coming of stock used to being in the presence of royalty could have stood as Paul did.

“If I may, I’d like to say a word or two,” he began tensely. “And then I shall keep quiet on the subject unless . . . unless you ask me to reopen it.”

“I was dying when you came back to me, Hilary,” he continued. “Dying under the burden of my brutality to you. I’d spent nights, days, praying that I might be given a chance to make good. To prove to you I’m not really the savage I acted.”

“Even now I can’t believe it,” he went on. “I can’t believe I was such a brute to you. For I love you in quite a different way. A way that makes me always want to kneel before you.”

At the word “love” Hilary made a gesture of annoyance. Yet she did not stir in her chair or take her eyes off him.

“I can’t expect you to believe me,” he said drearily. “And I’m not going to pester you with my love. I know only too well you don’t want it. But it’s all there if ever you should—which isn’t likely.”

Pausing, he looked at her as if hoping she might contradict this last statement. But she remained silent, still watching him with the same steady, calculating gaze, as if trying to understand all the various phases of his character.

“And I want you to understand too, that there never will be any woman but you, even if we live together on these terms all our lives. I only hope the child will be a son. Then at least one matter will be satisfactorily settled, and my guardians won’t be always pestering us on that score.”

When Paul mentioned his child he did not look at the girl. He hung his head as if more than ever conscious of his sin, and beneath his swarthy skin she saw the color rise.

Then he looked at her again, with the air of one who has made his confession of faith and intends to abide by it.

“From now,” he said, “I shall spend my days in trying to prove to you I’m not the savage you must think me. And I—shall never mention the word ‘love’ again unless you ask me to.”

As he talked he looked at her straightly with stricken eyes set in a proud young face. And Hilary realized that Paul, too, had his pride, a fact she had not taken into consideration lately, and that, now, she was dealing with Marius the haughty Roman.

When he finished speaking silence fell on the room except for what seemed the breathless, anxious ticking of the clock.

Just for a moment, just for so long as it took the echoes of his own voice to die away, he waited, as if hoping for some word or gesture from her. But Hilary sat as silent and motionless as a statue of gold and alabaster, her gaze now on the fire.

Hilary got to her feet, tall, slim and golden, as he had seen her that night in Cannes.

The moments passed but she did not speak. Instead, she carefully fitted a cigarette into the amber holder. When this was done she picked up a matchbox.

Hilary did not look at him. As if it held some strange fascination she kept her eyes fixed on the glowing tip of her cigarette.

The fruit of his sin was such an established fact in his mind that it could not be uprooted with one sentence.

With a patience she had not shown at the time of her previous confession, she descended to some slight explanation.

“In matters of the sort one can’t always tell. And I . . . I find I’ve been mistaken.”

How she had found out he was past considering. Hilary had stated a fact. In Paul’s mind that was enough. Indeed, too much. For he saw his one hope of retrieving his reputation vanish with her statement.

It seemed to the boy he had received his death sentence. The chance he had prayed for was being snatched from him. She no longer needed the shelter of his name, or him to help her. Now, she would refuse to go through the second ceremony. She was going to slip out of his life again. Always Rêve d’Or, a misty, haunting, golden vision.

He was too mortally stricken to say or do anything. He could only watch her with tortured eyes, as though expecting her to melt away before him.

“Before I say anything more, I want you to understand I have my mother to consider. But for her I should not have given you any choice.”

“To save my mother further pain I’ll go on with this farce—if you wish. But remember, I shall never live with you as your wife. Never.”

Hilary had never imagined there would be. The need of an heir had been impressed upon him too deeply. He must carry on the name.

A sense of impending loss invaded her, seizing and squeezing her heart with an intensity of pain that almost made her cry out.

As she spoke her eyes were on the tip of her cigarette. It had gone out. All the bright glow had vanished. It was just dull grey ashes, as her life had been since her idol had fallen.

She would have to try and pretend to her mother that Paul’s guardians had raised objections at the last moment. Had refused to consent to his marriage. As he was still a minor, nearly three years must elapse before they could be married in France. For the sake of the heir they had decided to live apart until he was of age. Any old lie to save her mother further pain.

“Hilary, how can I thank you. Nothing in the world matters so long as you’ll let me stay with you.”

Marius, the haughty Roman, had vanished. At her feet lay a boy, broken with emotion, sobbing in sheer relief. And through the thin silk of her stockings she felt his tears and his kisses.

In the Mountains of the Moors news travels slowly, more especially in the out-of-the-way parts and during the spring. The scattered inhabitants are then too busy at work in the deep fertile valleys and on the sunny, scented slopes to have either time or opportunity for gossip. Some of the cultivated tracts are so remote that the solitary toilers seldom see a soul all day, and return home at night along twisted little paths in cork and pine forests without meeting a human being.

The chief newsvendors are the shepherds. They wander for miles with their flocks of sheep and goats, gathering tit-bits of information on the way; as they amble along, pausing to gossip with the solitary workers and any stray folk they chance to meet.

One morning Le Taureau was slouching along a narrow way of rock and sand that led from his farm to the road, his objective an inn at the nearest village some four miles away.

Nowadays, he looked very different from the flashy young peasant who had taken Rosa Puget to the Café des Maures. His corduroys were unbrushed and encrusted with earth and stable grime, his neck-cloth and cummers bund were soiled and greasy, his cotton shirt stained and crumpled, his face bloated and unshaven, his lips purple, and a mad look lurked at the back of his bloodshot eyes.

Each day he grew more savage and sullen, rarely was he sober, his farm was more neglected than ever, his vineyards wholly untended.

That morning he was in a worse temper than usual, hating his landlord even more than was his wont. Not only was the young marquis at the bottom of Rosa’s departure, but now, in Le Taureau’s inflamed mind, it seemed that Paul was trying to turn him out of a farm his people had tenanted for three generations.

He had just received a letter from the agent who now collected Paul’s rents, in which he had been given to understand that, unless he reformed his ways, he would be turned out and a more suitable tenant put in.

Le Taureau still had enough money left to pay his rent regularly. To be treated as a defaulter enraged him. Again he cursed the seigneur for interfering. He was too maddened with drink and hate and passion to pause to consider that the matter had nothing at all to do with Paul; or to remember that a neglected vineyard cannot be brought to full bearing again in one or two years.

After reading the letter, raging, Le Taureau had set off to the nearest village to drown what he considered his accumulated wrongs in drink, and, incidentally, to get a friend there to help him to answer the communication.

As he went along muttering and grumbling to himself, cursing the world in general and Paul in particular, the sound of sheep bells reached him. Habit made him stand aside whilst the dogs herded a hundred or so of the animals through the narrow defile. Then, whilst they browsed in the more open space beyond, their guardian paused for a gossip.

The previous day, on the other side of the mountains, the shepherd had culled a piece of news that had aroused sensation wherever he had mentioned it.

“I suppose you’ve heard,” he said, “that our young marquis is married at last.”

Le Taureau had not heard. The news made him straighten his slouching figure somewhat and turn bloodshot eyes on the gossiper.

“Then they’ve managed to shove Yvonne Morelli on to him after all,” Le Taureau remarked.

There was a bitter, disappointed note in his voice. Although he was far from sober he knew that if Paul had married Yvonne it was not because he wanted to, but because he had been forced into the match. To kill the new marquise would not cause her husband any grief, in fact it would be a relief to him. At that moment it seemed to Le Taureau that Paul had robbed him not only of Rosa, but of his vengeance also.

“No,” the shepherd answered, “he hasn’t married the Morelli. He got his own way about that, and married for love as he always swore he would. He—”

“What’s that?” Le Taureau broke in quickly, thrusting his bloated face suddenly forward.

The shepherd repeated his statements and added further facts about the new marquise. Le Taureau listened, a smile like the snarl of a wolf gradually growing on his purple face.

About ten miles from Paul’s estate lay a tiny town. It was situated on one side of a cone-shaped hill and topped by the grim, grey ruins of an ancient castle. The whole place had a decayed look, as if it had been buried and then dug up, and was now gradually being absorbed back into the rock it sprang from.

Hilary knew that old town, where irises, white and purple, grow among the rocks, and anemones, red and blue, can be had for the picking. In her “boy” days she had motored through it many times to keep her trysts with Paul.

There was one little hotel in the place, clinging like a swallow’s nest to the side of a cliff, and looking down upon its own luxurious, tropical garden.

One day, towards the end of October, Hilary stood on a balcony of the hotel, watching a figure in the spreading grounds below; a tall, broad-shouldered figure in plus fours and variegated sweater, that wandered, bareheaded, among the riot of greenery, pausing every now and again to examine some plant or other.

Because of the wealth of palms, carobs, olives and mimosas she got but occasional glimpses of the young man far below, and only the fact that it was very unlikely he would see her, kept her lingering on the balcony of her bedroom.

After the French ceremony Paul and Hilary had set off on a prolonged tour of the principal sightseeing centers of Europe. In case gossip should reach her mother, or his relatives, through friends met or made on their travels, or chambermaids and men retailing tit-bits of information to passing valets and lady’s maids, they always occupied communicating rooms and shared a table together.

With the passing months Paul grew back to his old self, but bigger, stronger and more handsome.

As he regained his strength and physique Hilary once more became aware of the physical allure that had attracted her from the first. In spite of all efforts she was conscious of his old charm creeping over her. Often she wished he would prove greedy, lazy, drunken, or immoral, so that she could despise him more and more, instead of being aware that her animosity towards him gradually was retreating.

Hilary filled in her days with tennis and dancing, an aimless, futile round that she now loathed. Paul never joined in these amusements: the tennis court and ballroom were her special preserves, so he made a point of keeping out of them. To friends and acquaintances Hilary laughingly excused his absence by saying her husband had a soul above such frivolities, an excuse in keeping with his grave young face and serious mien.

It was quite an easy matter to keep up the farce. For this strange honeymoon they had brought neither maid nor valet nor car, explaining the reason of this to their relatives by saying they wanted to save towards the big expense of furnishing and renovating Rochefallain—a laudable economy that met with approval on both sides.

For Hilary that little silver car of hers held memories she could not endure; memories of the boy Adam as she had first known him, before the fruit of her folly and his passion had come to divide them.

During their travels Paul found some slight narcotic in new lands, art galleries, wonderful buildings, old ruins, strange cities, and an endeavor to improve his curtailed education.

Hilary knew most of the galleries and famous buildings of Europe. Often she longed to go with him and point out and discuss her favorites, but that meant encroaching on a sphere the boy had made his own.

She would have been so happy going round with him in Venice, or Rome or Madrid, or Berne, or Copenhagen, or Munich, or wherever they chanced to be, and when they saw anything they both specially fancied to have said “this we will have or thus we will do when we start on Rochefallain.” They were not going to be cramped for money where his castle was concerned. Delighted with her daughter’s match, Lady Fane had said that bills up to £5,000 could be sent in to her for renovating and furnishing her beloved son-in-law’s home.

But instead of going round with Paul, Hilary worked harder than ever at the now nauseating tasks of perpetual tennis and dancing, for deliberately to go out with him meant an intimacy pride would not permit.

She knew he went on long country walks to keep himself “fit.” This fact she gathered from the state of his boots and clothes on the occasions when he passed, hot and tired and dusty, through the lounge halls of the many hotels they stayed at. Then in her mind’s eye she saw him wistfully studying the various agricultural methods of the countries they visited, and wondering if by adopting any of them a few more francs could be extracted from Rochefallain, and so make him less dependent on her.

The knowledge that Paul hated her money as much as she tried to think she hated him, at times left Hilary very sore.

Within a very few weeks she had learnt that pride is a strange and terrible thing. Occasionally she skirmished round hers, trying to find some opening that would lead to Paul—Paul who was daily proving that in the tower he had been possessed of a devil. But it rose up steep and high around her, an icy barrier, keeping her frozen within its chill confines.

As time passed there were even occasions when she wondered if he really did love her, or whether some old-fashioned sense of honor had compelled him to go on with the marriage. Once free of their relatives, never in look or voice or gesture had there been any hint of the love he had so sincerely protested he felt for her.

In such moods, her mind dwelt with a sense of comfort on the scene in her mother’s library, with Paul broken before her, covering her feet with his tears and kisses.

Sometimes at night his three sons came and fought for him. Out of the unborn they stretched phantom hands towards the girl, knocking with baby fists on the door of her heart, begging her to open it and let their father in again, so that they might come and live with her on earth.

But Paul knew nothing of this. He only knew he had made a ghastly mistake. For fear of repeating his error, in that direction he dared not move again without some very definite signal from Hilary.

Always he felt the chilly barrier of her pride between them, as an experienced mariner at sea, by night, can feel the cold breath of an iceberg long before he sights it.

Every night Paul was up in his room long before Hilary was in hers. When she came into the next apartment, with a sort of painful catch somewhere inside of him he waited to hear the key turn in the door between them—Hilary locking him out of her heart. Every night he had heard it. Yet he went on listening, hoping against hope that a time would come when he would not hear the click he dreaded. For when she ceased to lock the door it would mean she had grown to trust him again.

Very frequently utter despair seized him. He tried to comfort himself with the fact that they had not been together so very long. Given time he might regain her faith and love. Often he wondered why he was so mad as to hope he might someday be forgiven. It seemed no man could have sinned more deeply then he had, and that only a fool would ever expect more than the chilly outward friendship that, for her mother’s sake, she had extended.

He did not know that as the months passed, pride alone made her lock the door, and that had he gone and insisted on his rights she would have let him stay.

The boy had had too bad a fall, and was too humble-minded a lover to have any faith left in himself.

For Paul those months had held agonizing moments apart from the torment of love and penitence that always racked him.

As the man of the party, hotel bills were delivered in his name. These and all other items connected with their tour he paid out of his own small fortune. Knowing nothing of the expense attached to traveling, he hoped his money would last for the duration of their tour. Once settled in Rochefallain, the rents and profits of his farming would be just enough to keep him from having to ask Hilary for money for his own personal expenses. But if one travels with a person used to spending £10,000 a year, the equivalent of seven hundred pounds will not last very long.

By the end of four months his exchequer was getting very low, and the day fast approaching when he would have to admit he had no money left.

Had she loved him the confession would not have been quite so hard to make. On his knees beside her, his face hidden in her lap, he might have been able to tell the shameful truth. But to have to stand bolt upright in her presence and hand her bills he could not pay, seemed more than he could do.

However, Hilary was keeping an eye on expenses. She had a rough idea of the amount of money Paul had at his command. With her growing desire to get in touch with him she made a forward movement.

Before his funds quite ran out, he received a letter from the bank to the effect that eight thousand pounds had been paid into his account by the marquise.

On reading the letter he wanted to rush to her and kiss her heart because she could be so kind. In spite of all that had happened she was not going to make him grovel before her for money; or to rob him of his manhood by letting all and sundry know his utter dependence on her. She was still Rêve d’Or, seeking no vengeance, returning good for evil. An altar he would worship at all his days if only she would let him.

With a new eagerness he went in search of her, and found her alone in the writing room. But the distant look she turned on him when he halted beside her, the banker’s letter in his hand, stopped the words on his lips.

With the shadow of his sin blotting out their early days together he forgot what Hilary hoped he would remember—a sentence of hers spoken in the kitchen of his hovel when they had been discussing the subject of marrying for money.

“If she really loved you she’d find a way of giving it so that it didn’t hurt.”

Her cool, unruffled gaze swept from his flushed, working face to the letter, and back again: a defiant look, a challenge, had Paul had sufficient knowledge of her sex to know it, daring him to hack his way through the icy barrier of pride to the love imprisoned within.

Now, his lack of experience where women are concerned was a handicap. All he read in that look was that if he crossed the boundary she had set, she would do what he always dreaded—go away from him and leave him quite alone with his sin, without even the poor grains of comfort he could glean occasionally by being allowed to do little things for her.

“Don’t you realize,” she said coldly, “that my position is awkward enough as it is, without people saying I bought you for your title, as they will if I start paying the bills. To prevent this, I prefer you to go on with it.”

After that chilly reply Hilary had gone back to her writing, thinking that now surely he would have the sense to see she wanted a readjustment of the situation. She hoped he would stammer something like “But . . . but you wouldn’t act like this, if you disliked me as much as you make out,” as any ordinary man would have done. That would have made a crack in the ice through which she could have put out another feeler.

Hilary continued her letter, an epistle to her mother saying among other things how she loved and admired and respected Paul more and more every day; facts the boy was too dazed by his own fall to see.

At length, with a hope that a mutual interest might break down the barrier she had raised between them, Hilary decided to go back to the Mountains of the Moors. To Paul she accounted for her behavior by saying she wanted to get the place ready for her mother’s visit in the spring.

A fortnight ago they had arrived in the tiny hill town, its one hotel being the only possible place to stay at within easy reach of the castle.

They had pored over plans and catalogues together. To all her suggestions he had agreed meekly, never expressing any wish or desire of his own. Very frequently she was seized with a mad inclination to smack or shake him, anything to arouse him from his mechanical, deferential attitude.

She did not realize that by now Paul had another “fixed idea”; this time that Hilary hated him. It would take a great deal more than her present tactics to eradicate this from his mind.

Within a week workmen had invaded the silent, shadow-haunted rooms of Rochefallain. Paul and Hilary drove up twice a day to see how things were getting on. Then the girl was in her element. Her eye was in and on and around everything. Paul was pleased she should be so interested in getting his old place in order, grateful there was something connected with him that she liked.

As the young man poked about in the hotel garden, unaware of the watcher on the balcony, he was waiting for nine o’clock to strike. At that hour he always fetched a car round from the hotel garage, ran it up to the main entrance, and then stood patiently in the hall until she appeared.

The car was an old one hired in the town; to be used until such times as Hilary could make up her mind what kind of a new one Paul really would like; a difficult matter owing to his annoying habit of agreeing with all she said.

The mountain road that led from the town to his castle had always been a favorite one of Hilary’s. At times it was just a wide ledge scooped out of the solid rock, with a swift upward slope of forest on one side, and a still swifter one on the other where it dropped down into deep, wild valleys. Occasionally it skirted sheer precipices, but at these points there generally was a low wall made of flat slabs of rock. The road wriggled up and dropped down, through little passes and across tiny plateaus; and sometimes between the hills could be had a glimpse of the sea, a deep, tense blue in the distance. There were no longer strange, bare-looking patches on the mountains where the chestnuts grew with boles and branches grey as the rocks they seemed to spring from. The trees were covered with leaves now, that autumn had turned into a blaze of red and gold, making burning patches among the green forests.

One afternoon they were driving back from the castle through the silent, deserted wilderness, when the car gave a harsh grate and came to a standstill with an abruptness that jerked them both violently forward.

“I’ve been expecting something of the sort ever since I saw the thing,” Hilary remarked on recovering her breath.

“I thought I overhauled it thoroughly last evening, but I must have missed something,” Paul said apologetically, as if he felt the fault were wholly his.

“Well, perhaps this will help you to make up your mind about a new one,” Hilary said.

“I really don’t mind. Get what make you like,” he said dispiritedly, as if all interest had gone out of his life.

It was unnatural for a young man of his years and type not to have a choice. The meek reply filled Hilary with a desire to take him by the ears and bang his head against a wall.

Paul got out of the car to see what the trouble was. Raising the bonnet he examined the works, and, after various adjustments, got in again.

Under protest, as it were, the old car started, but after going a few yards came to a standstill once more.

This time Hilary got out also. Together they examined the engine. Further adjustments were made, but without result.

“I doubt if you’ll be able to do any good. A scrap heap is the only place for it in my opinion. You’d better make up your mind to wait here until the lorry comes down and let them tow us back.”

Every morning from a little seaport some twenty miles away, a lorry load of workmen were taken up to Rochefallain, returning in the evening.

“It’ll be an hour or more before they get here. I may as well have a shot and see if I can’t do something.”

Hilary knew this was an excuse to keep out of her way. Feeling his presence must be a constant irritation to her, the boy always avoided a tête-a-tête if possible.

There followed a thorough overhauling of the derelict. In course of time Paul was on his back under the car, and Hilary sitting on a low wall some twenty yards away, that edged one of the precipices.

As she sat there deep in her own thoughts, among the forest undergrowth near was a slight rustle, like something pushing its way stealthily through and towards her.

Hilary did not notice this. She was too busy pondering on the ever-present problem of Paul. Always in her head now were words of his, spoken that evening in the library of her mother’s house.

“Don’t think I’m going to pester you with my love. I know only too well you don’t want it.”

She had been very sure about that point in those days. She had not seen him daily for five months then.

It would be too humiliating to have to confess she loved a man who had treated her as Paul had. She would not climb down. He ought to have the sense to know she would not stay with him if she did not like him just a little. She would not tell him so. Not if they lived on their present terms forever. It was for him to find that out for himself.

As Hilary sat lost in thought, something crashed down the steep bank on to the road, bringing her to her feet with a smothered gasp of fear. A great figure in torn and grimy corduroys, with mad eyes set in a purple, unshaven face, brandishing a long, curved pruning knife in a hairy fist.

For over a week Le Taureau had haunted the Rochefallain estate, vengeance the only idea left in his drink-sodden brain. Four times a day he had seen Paul and Hilary pass up and down the road in the old car, and he had haunted the most deserted portion of the route, hoping that something would happen to put them into his power. From a bend in the road on a hill opposite, he had seen the motor come to a standstill, and, not hearing it start again, immediately had made in that direction.

That savage, bloated face Hilary recognized at once. It had been engraved on her mind that day in the Café des Maures. But it was not of herself she thought.

From Count Naudin she had heard that Le Taureau had made one murderous attack on his landlord. And she had seen for herself his savage hate of the boy—the day Paul had fought a battle with the bully on her behalf.

On seeing the mad, bestial face and upraised knife, the icy barrier of pride came crashing down around her. She only saw the boy defenceless under the car and the murder on Le Taureau’s face.

“Paul! Paul, look out! Take care!” she screamed, running swiftly towards him. “A spanner. Quick! Try and stun him.”

For all her deadly fear Hilary did not lose her head. She remembered to call in French, so that he would understand her, and to mention their one available weapon, which, hurled with Paul’s strength most likely would have brained the madman.

Hilary heard the savage bellow and flew on. Paul heard it, too, as, in response to her wild call, he scrambled out from beneath the car, spanner in hand.

But he could not throw the weapon. Le Taureau was now so close to his victim that it might have struck her and not him. And on her defenceless back the knife was already falling.

Paul darted forward. He gave Hilary a sideways push that sent her sprawling. The knife flashed past her as she fell, and was buried in his chest.

With a bellow of rage Le Taureau tore the blade out again and turned towards his prey.

Then Paul was conscious of only three things. The agonizing pain in his chest. The fact that his strength could last only for a matter of seconds. And during those seconds Le Taureau must be put where he could not get at Hilary.

As, with upraised knife, the madman turned towards her, Paul seized him from behind, around the waist, with the strength of frenzy lifting him shoulder high. Then he staggered a step or two forward, towards the parapet skirting the precipice.

As Hilary picked herself up, she saw Paul, with the blood pouring over his chest, hurl his struggling burden over the low wall.

She rushed forward as Le Taureau started his headlong journey towards certain death on the grey boulders two hundred feet below.

In a moment she was kneeling over him, with frantic hands trying to staunch the blood that streamed from his panting chest, a further gush brought by his frenzied effort to save her.

“You don’t want my love, Carissima,” he gasped. “I’ve nothing else to give you but my life. And I give that gladly.”

Soon after Le Taureau’s attack, the lorry from the castle, with its cargo of workmen, came rumbling through the mountains. On turning a corner the occupants had come upon the tragedy; the marquis lying as if dead in the road, his wife kneeling, dry-eyed, beside him, her hands all smeared with his blood.

There had been no dwelling Hilary could run to for aid; the nearest was over a mile away. With some of her own clothing she had managed to bandage Paul’s chest. Then there was nothing she could do except wait for the lorry.

With breaking heart and strained ears she had listened for the first echoes of it. Ages seemed to pass before she heard its distant rumble. She felt she was doomed to kneel forever beside that silent, prostrate figure, watching the little red stream that trickled from his mouth, knowing that each minute that passed and each drop of blood lost brought his death closer.

When the lorry arrived, on a hastily improvised stretcher, four of the men carefully lifted the boy’s unconscious form into the motor, padding the floor with their coats so as to lessen the jar and vibration. Some half hour later, four of them lifted him out again and carried him upstairs to his room. The local doctor was telephoned for, and wires sent to Cannes for specialist and nurses.

The local practitioner arrived as the stretcher bearers were coming downstairs. A quick examination told him Paul’s only hope of life lay in blood transfusion. Hilary offered hers. But a glance told the doctor she was not fit to stand any further strain.

Among the workers still discussing the tragedy below, were half a dozen healthy young men, each willing to part with a pint of his blood at the price the doctor offered.

A test and a choice were quickly made. By the time the nurses and specialist arrived from Cannes, Hilary and the local practitioner had managed the transfusion between them.

For two days Paul lay in a state of coma, a spark of life still lingering in him, and continuing to linger, although both doctors and nurses shook their heads over him and at intervals said among themselves that he could not possibly last another hour.

Hilary sat by the bedside, her arm circling his unconscious head, her round cheek pressed against his sunken one, nursing one of his limp, lifeless hands, kissing his closed eyes occasionally and whispering:

Of course the tragedy of her boy-husband had made the young marquise a trifle demented. But she could do no harm just sitting quietly beside the patient.

For her own sake the doctors and nurses tried to coax her away. But she refused to go. She had a feeling that Paul must know she was there, and that if only she could make him understand she wanted him he would try his uttermost to scramble out of the Chasm of Death into which Le Taureau’s knife had sent him. She tried to urge the fact of her love on his subconscious being. Her whispers were an incantation; her presence a spell that might keep death at bay.

For two whole days and nights she sat with the patient, never closing her eyes in sleep, trying with love and kisses to fan that spark of life into a flame. If she were not continually watching, it seemed to the girl death would steal a march on her and put out that last lingering speck of life.

But to Paul the miracle had happened. He heard Hilary’s voice saying she loved him, wanted him. It made him cling frantically to the least bit of hold on the Precipice of Eternity over which he had fallen, determined to fight his way back to her if he could.

Now, through his pain and fever, he called to her, a faint hail out of the Gulf, to let her know he had heard and would come if he were able.

Faint as the occasional whisper was, she always heard it. She would lean over him, kissing the lips that breathed her name, holding the hot hands that tried so weakly to grope after her.

At the end of a week Paul was still alive, still clutching on to the Edge of Eternity, still refusing to die, in spite of the fact that by all the laws of medical science he ought to.

Then the doctors and nurses started talking about his splendid physique, and the clean healthy life he had always led. They knew nothing of the life-line Hilary had thrown down to him, but they knew that the patient would swallow only what the marquise gave him.

The nurses had endeavored to coax drops of strong soup, decoctions of milk, barley water or beaten egg down Paul’s throat. Even through his delirium the pain in his chest was so great that he preferred to be burnt up by fever rather than endure the agony of drinking.

Sunken fevered eyes looked up at her, for he recognized her voice and tried to obey.

“Now, sweetheart, just another tiny drop,” she said, when the first painful mouthful had gone down.

But even she could not persuade him into another sip without stooping to bribery and corruption.

Then those two hourly drops of liquid nourishment that comprised the invalid’s diet became a sort of game that Paul played in his fever; an agonizing game, but well worth its reward. For each sip he took Hilary would kiss him, and eventually the small “feed” vanished.

Doctors and nurses presently began to see that neither their science, nor their medicines, nor the patient’s own physique, could have dragged him back out of the Gulf of Eternity.

They no longer tried to coax Hilary out of the sickroom, or thought her a trifle demented. They said what a good thing it was she was a strong, healthy girl and could stand the constant strain. If she broke down, without a doubt the patient would die.

As the week went on, they all breathed a little more freely. Paul had enough strength to move his hands, enough voice for anyone in the room to hear what he said in his fever.

What he didn’t know and didn’t understand, the doctors and nurses could not make out. But Hilary knew. Paul’s honor was at stake now, and she guarded it as carefully as he had once guarded hers. No one must ever know he had sinned. To outsiders she put down that constant refrain to the fact that he had had an idea Le Taureau’s hatred was so deep that it had extended to her.

And when no one was near she would pat the boy’s face gently, hold the burning hands that groped so feebly after her, kiss him tenderly and whisper:

“I know you didn’t, darling. You mustn’t worry any more. It was as much my fault as yours. I ought to have remembered things were different here.”

When Paul heard that, he was more than ever determined to scramble back to life.

There came a day when weak, faint and exhausted, he managed to get back over the Edge, beyond the reach of the bony hands of death that for nearly a fortnight had clutched at him. The struggle had left him with no more strength than a kitten, too weak to lift his head from the pillow, only able to look about him with sunken eyes, as if surprised to find himself still alive.

With his return to reason, Hilary grew a little shy of him. Although she still spent most of the day in the sickroom, there was always someone else present, and now the nurses were allowed to see to his feeding and well-being.

It seemed to Paul he had had a dream of heaven, of Hilary understanding and forgiving—a dream that vanished with returning reason.

In spite of the fact that her hand frequently touched him in a tender, caressing manner, and that she always smiled at him fondly, he remembered how well she could act, and that she never forgot her pose when people were present. He began to wish he had had the decency to die and clear out of her way forever.

“Considering our patient’s marvelous rally, I don’t consider he’s making the progress he ought. You’ve been very helpful, marquise, with your wonderful knowledge of his temperament. What can be holding him back? Have you any suggestion to make? Anything we could go on, and so get to the root of the matter?”

The remarks filled Hilary with alarm. At once she guessed what was wrong. If Paul were not to slip back into the Chasm of Death out of which she had dragged him, she must put her pride in her pocket. But she did not mention her private opinion to the doctor.

“I rather fancy my husband is worrying over Le Taureau’s death. He makes a fetish of his responsibility towards his peasants.”

“If the marquis is worrying over that brute, I’ll soon put things right,” the doctor answered.

There and then he went with Hilary to the sickroom, and had a talk with the youngster. He told Paul that no one attached any blame to him for causing Le Taureau’s death. At the inquest he had been praised, not blamed for his action. In any case it was justifiable homicide. The whole place was talking of the superhuman effort he had made to save the marquise, and everyone was now rejoicing that he had not had to pay for it with his life.

Whilst the doctor talked Hilary stood by the bedside, smiling down at the invalid. With cool, careful, violet-scented fingers she put back a strand or two of hair that had escaped from the mass above his pain-drawn brow, at the same time smoothing his head gently: something about his bed-jacket met with her disapproval; a button at his throat was fastened, unfastened, and then done up again as if she preferred it in the first position; in spite of two nurses in constant attention, it seemed his pillows needed smoothing and the sheet across his wounded chest straightening; all the unnecessary, affectionate, little touches one gives to one’s best beloved Paul received. Finally Hilary’s hands came to anchor on one of his wasted ones lying so weakly on the coverlet.

Although he knew there was love and anxiety in each of her actions, he also knew the doctor was there, and that she always played her part well before the public.

Each lingering, loving touch of those cool, white hands, so faintly violet-scented, stabbed him like a knife, for they showed him so plainly what he had lost by his own mad behavior.

Hilary had dismissed the nurses when she came in. Now she was waiting until the doctor had had his say, before she had a little talk alone with the patient.

“Don’t . . . don’t pretend to like me, Hilary,” he said brokenly when she came back to the bedside. “I just can’t stand it. It . . . it makes me think what might have been if——”

He broke off, covering his face with his hands as if to shut out some mocking vision.

“Poor old Paul,” she whispered. “He always was—just a trifle stupid, wasn’t he, my darling?”

In spite of having no faith in himself, that caressing touch and the gentle, teasing, loving voice made the boy forget his pain and misery, and the fact that he was not supposed to move unaided.

He would have sat up and taken her into his arms, but she remembered the doctor’s instructions. Before he could move, her hands were on his shoulders, keeping him pinned to the pillows.

“You mustn’t jump about, or bawl at me in this manner,” she said, “not for another fortnight at least.”

Then a tear or two fell from her eyes to his face. Now, it seemed so pathetic that she could hold him as helpless as he had once held her.

At that moment Paul felt like a prisoner condemned for life who has been unexpectedly set free.

Although he could not move from the pillows, he stretched out weak arms towards the girl. And his face was radiant with love and worship.

“Hilary, say you forgive me. I can’t believe it,” he gasped, his voice both incredulous and full of a sort of breathless relief.

“What a doubter you are! Your name ought to be Thomas. But perhaps this will convince you.”

As she bent over him his arms went round her neck. There was no strength in them, but for all that she let her face be drawn back to the thin, eager, adoring one on the pillows.

“And you’re going to hurry up and get better now, aren’t you, my darling, so that we can have a good time together?”

“I’m such a pauper. I can give you nothing. You won’t ever think I married you for your money, will you, Carissima?”

It was such a weak, anxious voice. In spite of having nearly died on her account, he was still worrying about her money: a worry Hilary determined to try and remove once and for all.

She slipped an arm about him. Raising him carefully, she rested his head against her shoulder. Then she held him close and tight within her arms.

“How can I ever think that?” she whispered. “You never asked me to marry you. I did the asking.”

Suddenly Paul was confronted with his sin again. Like a stricken child he hid his face in her neck, and down on her heart Hilary felt the hot tears trickling.

With her lips on his hair, she stayed, patting those thin, heaving shoulders tenderly, whispering words of love, understanding and consolation.

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVII

CHAPTER XXXVIII

CHAPTER XXXIX