CHAPTER 11 A WOMAN WHO MIGHT HAVE BEEN HAPPY Gilbert Floristan, who came of age a few months before Robert Hattwell's death, was still a bachelor. He saw his 28th birthday approaching and he saw himself no nearer matrimony than when he was 21. His life in the interval had been eventful and he felt older than his years. He had entered the diplomatic service under the best possible auspices with family interest and collegiate honours in his favour. He had travelled much and had spent the brightest years of his youth in vagrant diplomacy passing from one legation to another. He had loved and he had suffered, and now at 28, having as he believed got beyond the passions and delusions of youth, he was established in Paris as an idler by profession, well looked upon in the best society of the dazzling capital and not unacquainted with the worst. He was not rich as wealth has counted nowadays when hardly any man under a millionaire presumes to consider himself comfortably off. He had bread and cheese, that is to say, landed property which brought him nominally 2,500 a year, actually about 1700. He was not ambitious. He had lost father and mother before he was fifteen years of age and he had none but distant relations. The stimulus to effort which paternal pride and maternal love might have afforded was in his case wanting. He had no sister to interest herself in his endeavours and to exult in his triumphs. He had no brother to rouse the spirit of emulation in his sluggish temperament. He told himself that he stood alone in the world and that it mattered very little what became of him, that he might go his own way whether to blessedness or perdition without hurting anybody but himself. This sense of isolation had tended towards cynicism. He saw the world in which he lived in its worst aspect and cultivated a low opinion of his fellow men. His estimate of woman had been of the lowest since one never to be forgotten April night in Florence when, standing in a moonlit garden, he heard a woman's careless speech from an open window just above his head, speech which told him with ruthless unreserve that the woman he had worshipped as more than half a saint was an audacious and remorseless sinner. Never till that night had Gilbert Floresdan deliberately listened to a conversation that was not meant for his ear and on that night he stood beneath the window cell for less than five minutes. He only waited long enough to be sure that he had not deceived himself, that the speech he had heard was not a delusion and gendered of his own fevered brain. There, hidden amidst the foliage of magnolia and orange, he stood and listened to the two who lent upon the cushion cell above him, looking dreamily out into the night. No, there was no illusion. Those words were real, still very sweet, though to him they sounded like the hissing of medusa snakes. They told him that the woman he was pursuing with all confiding love was the mistress of another man, that if she were to yield to his prayers and marry him, a question which she was now debating with her lover, the marriage would be a simple matter of convenience and the lover would not be the last beloved or the last favored. For thee, Cari Simo, it would always be the same, said the silver voice, and the music of the waltz in the adjoining ballroom seemed to take up the strain. Always the same, always the same. Floresdan waited to hear no more. He left the garden of that semi-royal villa, walked straight home to his lodgings in the Via Cavour, packed up the ladies' letters, those cherished letters every one of which, from the tiniest note acknowledging a bouquet to the longest and most romantic amplification of the old theme, he loves me, he loves me not, he had treasured in a locked drawer, together with every flower he had begged from the clusters she wore on her breast, every stray glove he had hoarded, and the dainty Cinderella slipper for which he had paid more than its weight in gold to her maid. He did not write her a letter. He would not stoop so low as to give any expression to his anger or his scorn. He had been deceived, that was all. The woman he loved had only existed in his imagination. The beautiful face and form which she had ignorantly worshiped belonged to quite a different kind of woman. Perhaps there was no such woman, out of a book, as the woman he had imagined, the woman of transparent soul and noble mind, the only woman he cared to win. I know you, good-bye. These five words were all the explanation or farewell which he dinged to send her. He wrote them in his bold strong hand upon a sheet of bath-post and wrapped it round the packet of letters. Then he packed them in another sheet and sealed them with the seal which had been set upon so many an ardent outpouring of his passionate heart.  He had come to Florence her romantic youth, he left Florence a blasé man of the world, and yet now five years after, in this bustling cosmopolitan and distinctly modern Paris, the very thought of those old palaces in which he had danced with her, those old gardens where they had sat in twilight and starshine, moonlight and shadow, thrilled him with the bittersweet memory of a delusion that had been dearer than all the realities of his youth. He had not been at Fountainhead, his birthplace by the river, except for a week or a fortnight at a time, since he came of age and sold the meadows adjoining River Lawn to Robert Atrell. But although he had been living abroad since he left the university, he had never consented to let strangers inhabit the house in which his father and mother had lived and died, albeit agents had been desirous to find him an eligible tenant. The house remained shut up in the care of his mother's faithful housekeeper and her nephew, a handy young man who helped in the gardens where expenses had been cut down to the lowest level compatible with the preservation of the beauty of grounds which had been the chief delight of young Mrs. Florestan's life. A woman takes to her garden naturally as a duckling takes to water and cherishes it and watches it and thinks about it as if it were a living thing. The worship of flowers and shrubs is inherent in the female mind and a woman who did not care for her garden would be a monster. The house was old, as old as the tutors, and it was just one of those places which the modern millionaire would have ruthlessly raised to the ground or so altered, restored, enlarged and beautified as to obliterate its every charm of age and picturesqueness. Florestan was content to leave it all alone in its subdued coloring, quaintness and inconveniences of construction, telling of a civilization long past and of a life less pretentious and more domestic. The gardens had all the grave beauty of an honorable old age. Very little money had been spent upon them, but there had been taste and care from the beginning of things when they who planted them had Lord Bacon's essays on gardens in their minds as a new thing and had known Francis Bacon in the flesh and talked with him of the trees and flowers he loved. Vagrant diplomacy had carried Gilbert Florestan very far from the old home when which his ancestors had dwelt from generation to generation, but he kept the image of his birthplace in a corner of his heart and he would almost as soon have sold his heart's best blood as the house in which his people had lived and died. Paris suited his cynical temper at 1820, the city through which the whole civilized world passed and repast, the vestibule of Europe, the playground of America, the city in which a man who only wanted to be a spectator of the life drama could have ample opportunity to study the varieties of mankind, nationalities, professions, wealth and penury, beauty and burning. Mr. Florestan had a fourth floor in the Champs-Élysées, an apartment which he spoke up jacuzzi as his sky parlor. Nominally the fourth, it was practically the fifth floor and the balcony commanded a bird's-eye view of the city, a vast panorama of white walls and gray and red roofs through which wound the serpentine coils of the dark blue river. Although the rooms were so near the roof they were spacious and lofty and were furnished with some taste, Florestan's own belongings, books, pictures, photographs, bronzes and curios, giving an air of comfort and individuality to the conventional Louisé's suite of tapestry-deasy chairs and sofas, ebony tables and cabinets. The rooms comprised an anti-room where three large palms and a Turkish divan suggested oriental luxury and which served as a waiting room for tradesmen and troublesome visitors of all kinds. A library where Florestan dined on the very rare occasions when he dined at home, a small smoking-room adjoining and a spacious bedroom with dressing and bathroom attached. Here Gilbert Florestan lived his own life, received the few intimate friends he cared about and shut out all the great family of boars. In the polite world of Paris he was known as a well-born Englishman whose commanding presence and handsome face were distinctly ornamental in any salon and he was welcomed accordingly with Parisian effusion which he knew meant very little. In the demimonde he was known as a young man who had outlived his illusions and in that half-world he was a more important figure than in the salons of the great. It must be owned that he had a preference for bohemian society with all its accidents and varieties, its brilliant reputations of today, its sudden disappearances of tomorrow, its frank revelations, its absence of all reserve. He painted cleverly in a sketchy style after the manner of the impressionists and he was very fond of art. Music in the drama had also an inexhaustible charm for him and he loved those out of the way nooks and corners of the art world were dwell the men and women whose talents have won but scanty appreciation from the great public and who have never been spoiled or felicitinized by large monetary rewards. Directly an artist gets rich there is a divine fire goes out of him, said Florestan. All the spontaneity and the daring which made him great is paralyzed by the greed of pain. He no longer obeys the first impulse of his genius, the real inspiration, but he sits down to consider what will pay best, the thing good or bad, true or false which will bring him in the most solid cash. He strives no longer to realize his ideal. He studies the market and paints or writes or composes for that. And so dies the divinity out of his art. His genius shudders and flies the trader's studio, for once bitten with the desire to make money the artist sinks to the level of the trader. He is no better than the middleman with his shop on the boulevard and his talent for reclame. There is plenty of unrewarded talent in the great city of Paris and amongst painters and composers who had never reached the monotonous table-land of financial ease amongst journalists, poets and vaudevilleists, Gilbert Florestan found a little world which was Bohemian without being vicious, but which occasionally opened its doors to certain stars of the Demimonde who would hardly have been received in the great houses of the Fauxbours Saint-Germain or the Fauxbours Saint-Honoré. It was at a musical evening on a third floor in the rue des Saint-Pères that Florestan met two women in whom he felt keenly interested at first sight. They were mother and daughter. The mother was distinguished looking and had once been handsome. The daughter was eminently beautiful. He was told that they were Spaniards, natives of Madrid. The elder lady described herself as the widow of a general officer, Félix Guihada, who died when her only child Dolores was an infant. She had migrated to Paris soon after her husband's death and had lived there ever since. Mother and daughter were both dressed in black with an elegant simplicity which did not forbid the use of a great deal of valuable lace, and Florestan noted that the elder lady were diamond solitaire earrings and the younger, acolyte necklace which would not have mis-be-seamed the throat of a duchess. Nowhere, however, could diamonds have shown to greater advantage than on the ivory whiteness of Mademoiselle Dolores de Guihada's swan-like neck. Nowhere had Florestan seen a lovelier complexion or finer eyes, but that which attracted him most in the Spanish girl's face was her resemblance to the woman he had loved, the woman who had deceived him and well-nigh broke in his heart. He was interested in her at first sight and he begged to be introduced to her and her mother. They received him with cordiality, perhaps because he was the handsomest and most aristocratic-looking man in an assembly where art was represented by long hair and well-worn dress-goats on the part of the men and by eccentric toilets and picturesque heads on the part of the women. Madame Dutouk, the giver of the party, was the wife of a musical man who had written a successful opera twenty years before, succeeded by several unsuccessful ones and who now made a somewhat scanty living by giving piano forte lessons and publishing occasional compositions, which he fondly believed to be as good as Chape's best work, but which were rarely played by anybody except his own pupils. Clever people, musical or otherwise, liked good-natured little Madame Dutouk's parties and as she did not inquire too closely into the antecedents of any well-mannered and pretty woman who sought her acquaintance, people were met in her salon who were not without histories and whose past and present existence was in some wise mysterious. The Spanish beauty and her mother were accidental acquaintances met at Boulogne-sur-Mer the previous summer. Are they not charming? The little woman asked Florestan while her husband, a grim-looking man with a long gaunt figure after the manner of Don Quixote, a long pale face and long gray hair, was crashing out one of his noisiest Mazurkas in which the temple Rubato prevailed to an agonizing extent. They are of a very old Castilian family. A Quijada was secretary or something to Charles V, and I know that they are rich, though they live in a very simple style on a second floor in the Roussanghi home. The young lady's diamonds look like wealth most assuredly, replied Florestan. But how comes it that so lovely a woman and not without a daughter should be unmarried at five or six and twenty? She looks quite as old as that. Oh, she has had offers and offers. She is tired of admiration and pursuit. Her mother has talked to me of the grand opportunities she has thrown away.   They adore each other. It is a most touching spectacle to see them in their modest interior. The mother looks as if she could hate as well as love, said Florestan. There are some resolute lines about those lips and that prominent chin. Quite the patricionnaire has she not? And remarkably well preserved, too, said madame, who was proud of her guests and their diamonds. It was not often such diamonds had appeared on the third floor over a bookmaker's shop in the Rue des Saint-Pères. When the Mazurka had finished, in a tempest of double arpeggios and a volley of cords, Florestan contrived to get her little conversation with memoiselle Quihada. Her manners were certainly distinguished. She had a reposeful air that contrasted agreeably with the Parisian vivacity which Florestan knew by heart. Her voice was deep toned and full, and seemed just the one voice to harmonize with the dark and luminous eyes, the somewhat heavy features and marble complexion. She did not strike him as a brilliant or intellectual woman. She suggested a statue warmed into life, but only a dreamy and languorous life which might at any hour fade again into marble. He had a shrewd suspicion that she was unhappy, that the diamonds and the adoring mother did not altogether suffice for content. There was a pained look sometimes about the lovely sensuous lips. There was a droop in the sculptured eyelids which suggested weariness, weariness of life and of the world, perhaps, or it might be that self-contempt which springs from the consciousness of a false position. He was struck with her and interested in her, but she awakened no tender emotion in his breast, no thrill of passion in his veins. He could never love any woman who was like that woman. If ever love came to him again, the divinity must wear a different shape, must be as unlike his false love as one woman can be unlike another. I cannot give parties like these pleasant gatherings of Madame Dutuks, said Madame Quihada by and by when she was bidding him good night, after he administered to her comforts by supplying her with a cup of very weak tea in a sugared biscuit, my daughter and I live in a very secluded way. But we are always at home to a few intimate friends on a Thursday evening, and if you should ever care to drop in upon our seclusion we shall be charmed to see you. Be sure, Madame, that I shall not be slow to avail myself of that distinguished privilege, replied Florestan, and his reply meant more than such an answer usually means. His curiosity, his interest in the side scenes of life were aroused by these two women, in whose existence he sent one of those small social mysteries which he delighted to unravel. So beautiful and so elegant a woman as Senorita Quihada would hardly waste her beauty and her jewels upon such a shabby salon as Madame Dutuks if she were free of more fashionable assemblies. She was evidently outside the pale and with that hankering after respectability which is the canker warm of the disreputable she had greedily accepted the unquestioning kindness of the music master's wife. What do you think of those two, asked a young portrait painter with whom Florestan was intimate as the Spanish ladies left the salon. I take them to be women with a history. Yes, and a dark one, Madame Dutuks is an angel of benevolence and simplicity, and all her wandering lights are a purist luster. She has entertained a good many demons unawares, and I fancy Madame Quihada she has got hold of a very sulphurous specimen. The lady is handsome and her manners are both dignified and refined. So are the manners of a harpy no doubt when you meet one in evening dress. I dare say Clita Menestra was a very elegant woman and Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth is one of the politest persons in the world of poetry. I think I would as soon trust my life in a lonely scotch castle with Lady Macbeth as on a third floor in Paris with Madame Quihada supposing that Madame Quihada had any motive for poisoning me. You take a strong view, said Florestan smiling at his intensity. I always take strong views. It is my trade to study the human countenance, and I have made a particular study of those two faces, mother and daughter. The daughter is a victim.  Did you see the diamonds they wore? Those are the price of a woman's soul. The daughter has been sold to the highest bidder, and the mother has been the huckster. That woman would do anything for gain. I am sorry for Madame Quihada if there is any truth in your supposition. So am I, sorry almost to tears.  Sorry for beauty trodden underfoot. She is a woman who might have been happy. Yes, I am sorry for her. Florestan lost no time in availing himself of Madame Quihada's invitation. He went to the Roussaint Guillaume on the following Thursday evening between eight and nine, very curious to see what kind of home the Spaniard and her daughter had made for themselves in the wilderness of Paris. The house in which they lived was one of the oldest and possibly one of the largest in the old fashioned street. It was assuredly one of the most gloomy, a house with a stone courtyard, screened from the street by a high wall. To enter the court after dark was like going into an abyss of gloom through which a lighted window here and there shown faintly muffled by curtains. For the most part, the windows were closed by Venetian shutters through which no ray of lamp light escaped. The porter who answered Florestan's summons informed him that Madame Quihada's door was on the left side of the second floor landing, but vouchsafed no further attention and he groped his way upward between the dim lamp light in the vestibule and the still fainter light of a lamp on the first floor. The second floor had only the borrowed light from below and he was but just able to distinguish the handle of the doorbell. He was surprised at the door being opened by an elderly man in livery, a very sober livery, who had the air of an old retainer and who conducted him through a lobby and an anti-room to a spacious salon where he found the two ladies seated with the third who sat in a corner somewhat overshadowed by the projecting chimney piece, a woman of any age between 20 and 40 whose pale face and premature gray hair attracted Florestan's attention. seldom if ever had he seen a countenance which bore in its every line so striking an evidence of past sorrow. That woman with the iron gray hair must have suffered as very few women are called upon to suffer, he told himself. The beautiful Dolores was seated on a sofa on the opposite side of the hearth, fanning herself with a languid grace which brought into play the beauty of her hand and the brilliancy of her diamond rings and listening or pretending to listen to the animated talk of a man whom Florestan recognized as the celebrated journalist and novelist François de Lomarac. A petit crevé of two or three and twenty who sat on a pouf near the sofa, lost in admiration of the lady's beauty and the journalist's wit, completed the party. Madame Quijada received him with much cordiality, Dolores gave him the tips of her fingers and Lomarac accorded him a condescending nod. A man whose last novel had taken Paris by storm could not be expected to put himself out of the way on account of a casual Englishman. Florestan took a chair near the lady in the shadowy corner and then having talked for a few minutes with his hostess gave himself up to the contemplation of the room. In his mind surroundings were always indicative of character and he wanted to see what the nest would say of the birds. The salon was furnished with stern simplicity and in a subdued style of decoration and coloring that testified to the refinement of the person who had planned and arranged it. The Louis Sey's armchairs and sofas were covered with old tapestry in greenish and grayish tones softened by age. They looked like furniture that had been brought from some old family home in the country. There were three or four small tables, a secretaire in old walnut, an Indian screen and several vases filled with choice flowers. Of those be bleu and chinois riz that ornament the average drawing room there was no trace. Those choice flowers which at this season must have been costly were the only embellishment of the somewhat somber furniture. Chief among them was a clustering mass of white lilac and a vase of richly glazed delft that looked like lapis lazuli. The spacious and lofty room with its neutral coloring and air of a departed century would have been gloomy without these flowers. They afforded the only touch of brightness and gaity in the picture. An affectation of simplicity with considerable expenditure in superfluities such as hot-house flowers and diamonds mused Florestan. I wonder what it all means, and I wonder what she means. He added, looking at the pale silent woman with the large soft eyes and the iron gray hair. It might be that Madame Quihada saw his look, for she approached at this moment and introduced him to the silent lady, whom she described as her niece, whose husband was El-Mercé. "'Louise is more than my niece. She is my adopted daughter,' she said. Her father and I were brought up together on a small estate in the neighborhood of Mercé, and my niece here was born within sight of the Mediterranean.' "'Ah, that is the sea and that is the sunny shore we Englishmen love as well as any spot of earth,' said Florestan, addressing himself more to the niece than to the aunt, but the younger woman took no notice of his speech. "'Do you see any likeness between my daughter and her cousin, monsieur?' asked Madame Quihada. "'Yes, there is no doubt a likeness,' answered Florestan. I can trace it in the form of the brow and in the expression of the eyes.' He waited, looking at mademoiselle Mercé with a friendly smile, expecting her to speak, and then, keenly anxious to hear her voice, he asked her an unmeaning question. "'Are you fond of Paris, mademoiselle, or do you still regret the olive woods and pine-clad hills of Provence? I have never left off regretting them,' she answered in a subdued voice that struck him as full of a vague pathos as if sorrow had changed all the major tones to minor, and yet it is so long since I saw them that they seem almost like the memory of a dream. "'And you have never been tempted to revisit the south?' "'No, monsieur.' "'My poor Louise does not travel,' interjected Madame Quihada. She suffered nine years back from a serious illness which shattered her nervous system. She has been obliged to lead a very tranquil life since then. She is our household fairy, the angel of the hearth, an admirable housewife, but she cares very little for the outer world. Except for her morning walk, before we lazy people are up or to hear an opera now and then she very rarely leaves home. "'You are fond of the opera, mademoiselle?' asked Florestan. "'Yes, I love good music wherever it is to be heard, but the opera most of all, it is another world. I forget everything while I am there.' Her face kindled a little as she spoke. The light was not a vivid light, but it was at least an awakening from the dull apathy he had noticed before. "'I should like to send you a box with the opera some night if you will allow me,' he said. "'I know some great ladies who are occasionally generous to me when they don't care about occupying their boxes. May I seize the first opportunity and send you one?' "'I shall be very grateful to you.' He was studying her face while he talked to her. The features were delicate and regular, the eyes were still beautiful, but sorrow had plowed deep lines about them and had set its mark upon the broad white brow. Marred as it was by past suffering he liked her face better than her cousins. That type of sensuous beauty which had held him captive five years ago had lost all charm for him now. He wanted the mind, the music breathing from the face, and in Madame Quixote's niece with her iron-grey hair, lined forehead and melancholy eyes, he saw a spiritual beauty which enlisted all his sympathy. That idea of a great sorrow suffered in the morning of life and leaving its indelible mark upon the sufferer impressed him strongly. He was floating about among his great ladies in one of the most brilliant salons of Republican Paris on the following evening, but he did not ask any of those luminaries for her box at the opera, preferring to go to the box office and pay for one. It was quite true that boxes had been offered to him, but the occasions had been somewhat rare and he had only put forward that idea in order to lessen Memoiselle Melce's sense of obligation. He wanted to give her pleasure if he could, and he wanted to see more of the curious trio. He sent the box ticket to Madame Quixote expressing the hope that she and her daughter and niece would attend the next representation of Gounot's Faust which was fixed for the following night. The lady had told him that she seldom went out in the evening and he therefore counted on finding her disengaged. He added that he should have the honor of visiting their box in the course of the performance. He had secured a stall so that he should not appear to have offered the box to the beautiful Dolores with the idea of exhibiting himself in her company for the whole evening. But the precaution was wasted so far as Dolores was concerned, for Madame Quixote's daughter was not in the box when he looked up from his place in the stalls to see how it was occupied. Madame Quixote was in the place of honor, looking dignified and distinguished in her Spanish mantilla, fastened with diamond stars and beside her simply dressed in a black gown and a mariante onette fichu sat Louise Merce, attentive and absorbed, evidently drinking in every note of the overture. He had scarcely time to wonder at Mademoiselle Quixote's absence when someone in the next row said, How do you do, Florestan? And he was startled at finding his river-lon neighbor seated exactly in front of him.  It is not granted to many women to be perfectly beautiful at eight and thirty, but it had been granted to Ambrose Arden's wife, and her husband's heart thrilled with pride as he noted Florestan's admiring look, a look which passed over the daughter to linger on the beauty of the mother. Florestan's glance went back to the daughter presently, and he saw that she too was lovely, with a loveliness which echoed every note in the mother's beauty, only the lines were less developed and less definite, the coloring was less brilliant. He looked from the young girl to the young man beside her and recognized Cyril Arden, whom he had not seen for some years. There had never been anything approaching intimacy between Florestan and the family at Riverlawn, but there had been acquaintance and exchange of civilities from the commencement of the Hattrell's residence when the owner of Fountainhead was an undergraduate subject to the dominion of guardians. He had thus in a manner seen Daisy Hattrell grow from infancy to girlhood, and he noted the opening flower with admiring eyes. She seemed to him the perfection of English girlhood. Her complexion of lilies and roses, her hazel eyes and auburn hair, realized his ideal of English beauty, albeit as in her mother's case the brilliancy of the coloring recalled the school of Titian rather than the school of Reynolds. He murmured a few words of congratulation to Ambrose Arden, whom he had always regarded as a scholarly and inoffensive person, a mere non-entity outside his library. He wondered much that such a man could have won the heart of such a woman as Clara Hattrell. He asked if they had just come from Lanford and was told of their Italian winter. We are going back to Riverlawn almost immediately, said Clara. I am longing to be amongst my household goods. Even Venice could not make mother-fast to Riverlawn, added Daisy. And are you not glad to go home, Miss Hattrell? asked Florestan. Home is always sweet. Yes, I shall be glad to see all the dear old things again. Garden, river, books, horses and dogs and boats, but Venice was simply intoxicating. You know it, I suppose. By heart. There are very few spots in Italy that I don't know. There goes the curtain, the curtain rose, and Florestan was silent, deferring his visit to Madame Quijada's box till the end of the act. He had looked up once while he was talking to his friends and had seen that lady's keen black eyes watching him intently while her niece, wrapped in the music, seemed unconscious of all else and certainly unconcerned about him. He left his place after the curtain fell and went straight to the box where the open door suggested that he was expected. I am sorry not to see Mademoiselle Dolores, he said, when he had exchanged greetings with both ladies. She sends you her best thanks for your courteous invitation, replied Madame Quijada, which she very seldom goes out in the evening. Our appearance at that good Madame Dutouks was an exceptional event. It is a pity that so much beauty should be hidden from the world, said Florestan. Madame Quijada bowed her acknowledgment of this speech and returned to the contemplation of the audience. She seemed to know everybody of consequence in that assembly, by sight, but she recognized no one as an acquaintance. You were talking to some friends in the stalls just now, she said to Florestan, with her eyes fixed upon the ardent liberty, a very handsome woman with a handsome daughter. They are your compatriots, no doubt? Yes, they are English. The lady is my next-door neighbor on the banks of the Thames. She has lately married for the second time. Louise Mercier followed the direction of her aunt's eyes and looked down at the stalls where the two beautiful heads with rich arbor and hair were conspicuous in a central position. The orchestra was silent just now and Louise's thoughts were at liberty. Is she a great lady in England, a lady of title? asked Madame Quijada curiously. No, she is the wife of a commoner. She and her husband are well-off and of good family, but they are not great people. What is the lady's name? Arden, her daughter, is Miss Hattrell. Hattrell? Louise Mercier repeated the name almost in a whisper. There was something in her tone that startled Florestan, and he was still more surprised on looking at her to find her as she pale. Her aunt saw the change in her face and rose quickly and supported her to the back of the box, where she moistened her temples with odour cologne. The poor child will be better soon, she said to Florestan. She has been subject to these swooning fits ever since her illness. Come now, Louise, you are better now, are you not? Yes, I am quite well now. It was nothing. Oh, it was very nearly a fainting fit. We have just escaped all the fuss and anxiety of a swoon. What was it made you feel ill, the light and heat or the excitement of the music? It was the light, perhaps. It gave me a kind of vertical. And I was so interested in looking at Mrs. Hattrell, she said, pronouncing the name with an accent which somewhat disguised it. Tell me about her. She went on turning to Florestan.  Yes, she is my friend. And she has married for the second time lately. Quite lately, as late as last September. And she is happy. I suppose so. She has gone through a great deal of trouble, but I conclude that now she has a new husband she has forgotten that old sorrow. Her first husband's death was a tragical one. He was murdered in London seven or eight years ago by an unknown hand. And has his murderer never been found, asked Madame Quihada with reviving interest? Here I fear he never will be. Louise had resumed her seat and was gazing at the two fair faces in the stalls absorbed in contemplation. How old is Mrs. Hattrell? She asked presently. About eighteen. Is she amiable? Charming! I have never met a sweeter girl. I have known her from her childhood, but we have not seen very much of each other. I have been a wanderer on the face of the earth as I think I told you the other night. Yes, answered Louise absently with her eyes fixed on Daisy's smiling face. How happy she looks and how good! Was she fond of her father? Very fond. She was only a child when she lost him, but she was devoted to him and he to her. You remember him? You knew him well? Fairly well and liked him much. He was as frank and open as the day, a man without guile. I do not like that other man, said Louise still looking down at the stalls. Which man? The second husband. Why not? How can you like or dislike at a glance? I always do. I liked and trusted you at the first glance. I distrust him. End of Chapter 11 Chapter 12 of One Life, One Love by Mary Elizabeth Bratton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. 12. Floristan's Mission Floristan lunched with Mr. and Mrs. Arden on the day after their meeting at the opera. It was the lady who gave him the invitation. He had always been a favorite of hers since the time when he sold the meadow and earlier when he had just left Eaton for the superior independence of the university and in this busy Paris crowded with strange faces she had been pleased to meet with a familiar face.  Everything was dear to her that brought back the memory of that time. Was she happy with her second husband? No, she was not, unless gratitude and a placid submission to the decree of fate mean happiness. She had drifted into this second marriage upon the strong tide of Ambrose Arden's passionate love, a love which had gathered force with each long year of waiting and which had become a power that no ordinary woman could resist. Such a passion so exceptional in its patient endurance, its intense concentration, will compel love or at least a surrender of liberty and the submission to woman's destiny which is, for the most part, to belong to someone stronger than herself. She had submitted to this mastery and she was grateful for that devoted affection which knew no wavering which had lost none of its romantic intensity with the waning of the honeymoon. No woman could be heedless of such a love as this from such a man as Ambrose Arden, and his wife was deeply touched by his idolatry and gave him back all that a woman can give whose heart is cold as marble. Tenderness, deference, companionship she could give and she gave them, but the love she had lavished on Robert Hattrell was a fire that had burnt out. It was not in Ambrose Arden's power to rekindle the flame. Never since the first year of her widowhood had her thoughts recurred so incessantly to the past as they had done since her second marriage. In her life with her daughter, the two as sole companions, something of a girlish gait he had returned to her. She had become almost a girl again in adapting herself to a girl companion. In her anxiety to keep the burden of sorrow off Daisy's youthful shoulders she had shaken off the shadow of her own sad memories and had given herself up to girlhood's small pleasures and frivolous interests. But since her marriage, since her chief companion had been Ambrose Arden and not Daisy, a deep cloud of melancholy had come down upon her mind. The image of her first husband had become a ghost that walked beside her path and stood beside her bed. The memory of her happiest years had become a haunting memory that came between her and every interest that her present life could offer. Thus it was that she had been eager to see more of Florestan and had asked him to luncheon at their hotel. This time they were at the Bristol and it wasn't a salon on the second floor looking out upon the Place Vendôme that they received Gilbert Florestan.  She had a bunch of lilies of the valley pinned upon her breast, a posey which Cyril had just bought for her in the rue Castiglione. They had been running about Paris all the morning, floral protesting that the great city was a vulgar, glaring, dusty whole, yet very delighted to attend his sweetheart in her explorations and to show her everything that was worth looking at. I hope I have satiated her with churches, he said, we have driven all over Paris and have gone up and down so many steps that I feel as if I had been working on the treadmill. We wound up with a scamper in Père Lachaise. It was a scamper, exclaimed Daisy. He would hardly let me look at any of the monuments. They are all mixed up in my mind, a chaos of bronze and marble, classical temples and Egyptian obelisks, Bazaq, Rachel, the Russian princess who was burnt to death at a ball, Desclis, Thiers, Abelard and Eloise. I could spend a long day roaming about in that place of names and memories, and Cyril took me through the alleys almost at a run. Why should a girl want a prowl about a cemetery, unless she is a ghoul and is mapping out the place in order to go back there in the night and dig? Cyril protested with a disgusted air. I would rather have to stand and wait while you looked at all the shops in the rue de la paix. The luncheon was a very lively meal for both Cyril and Florestan were full of talk and vivacity, and Daisy talked as much as they let her, leaving Arden and his wife free to look on and listen. These two had spent their morning together among the second-hand bookshops on the Kévoltaire where the scholar had found two or three treasures in 16th-century typography and where the scholar's wife had hunted for herself among volumes of a lighter and more modern character and had selected some small additions to the carefully chosen library at River Lawn, a collection which had been growing ever since Robert Hatraal's death had made her in some measure dependent upon books for companionship. After lunch, Florestan suggested a pilgrimage to Saint-Denis and offered to act as Cicceroni, an offer which Daisy accepted eagerly. So a roomy open carriage was ordered, and Mrs. Arden, her daughter, and the two young men set out for the resting place of royalties, leaving Ambrose Free to go back to the bookshops. It isn't a bad day for a drive, said Cyril, as the Lando bowled along the broad-level road outside the city, but I am sorry that we are pandering to Miss Hatraal's ghoulish taste by hunting after graves. There was more discussion that evening as to how long the River Lawn party should remain in Paris. They had arrived from Italy two days before, and while they were in Venice, Mrs. Arden had been anxious to return to England and had confessed herself homesick. In Paris she seemed disposed for a delay. I can't quite understand you, Clara, said her husband. All your yearning for home seems to have left you. I am as anxious as ever to go home, but there is something I want to do in Paris. What is that? Oh, it is a very small matter. I would rather not talk about it. Ambrose looked at her wonderingly. This was the first time since their marriage that she had refused to tell him anything. He did not press the point, however. The matter in question might be some feminine frivolity, some transaction with dressmakers or milleners, which it was no part of a husband's business to know. Later on in the evening his wife asked a question. Does Mr. Floristan know Paris particularly well? Cyril answered her. He tells me that he knows Paris by heart and all her works and ways. He has lived here a good deal off and on, and now he has established his pietàre in the Champs-Élysées and means to winter here and to summer at Fountainhead. He will have him for a neighbor, Daisy. I hope you are not going to make me jealous by taking too much notice of him. He spoke with the easy gait of a man who knows himself beloved and who is so secure in the possession of his sweetheart's affection that he can afford to make a jest of the possibilities which might alarm other men. Daisy first blushed and then laughed at the suggestion. Poor Mr. Floristan, she sighed. No father or mother, no sister or brother, nobody to be happy or unhappy about, what an empty life his must be. Oh, the fellow is lucky enough. He has a nice old place and a good income. He is young and clever, and, well, yes, I suppose he is handsome. Daisy offered no opinion. He was very handsome, said Ambrose Arden looking up from the chess board at which he and his wife were seated. Clara had never touched a card since the nightly rubber came to an end with her husband's tragical death, but she played chess nearly every evening with Mr. Arden who was a fine player and intensely enjoyed the game. His wife played just well enough to make the contest interesting and then there was for him an unfailing delight in having her for his antagonist, the delight of watching her thoughtful face with its varying expression as she deliberated upon her play, the delight of touching her hand now and then as it moved among the pieces, the delight of hearing her low, sweet voice. This life could give him no greater joy than her companionship. It had been the end and aim of his existence for long and patient years. Mrs. Arden sent Floristan a telegram next morning, asking him to call upon her as early as he could before luncheon. Her husband was going to attend the sale of a famous library and she would be free to carry out an idea which she had entertained since her meeting with Floristan at the opera. Mr. Arden had not been gone more than a quarter of an hour before Floristan was announced. Cyril and Daisy were sightseeing and Mrs. Arden was alone in the salon. She was sitting near one of the windows with their traveling desk on the table before her. She thanked Floristan for his prompt attention to her request and motioned him to a seat on the other side of the writing table. I am going to ask you to do me a great favour, Mr. Floristan," she said very seriously, although our friendship has been so interrupted and so casual that I have hardly any claim upon you. All that was ardent and frank and generous in the man who affected cynicism was awakened by this deprecating appeal and perhaps still more by the pathetic expression of the soft hazel eyes and the faint tremulousness of the lower lip. You have the strongest claim, he answered eagerly. There is nothing I would not do to show myself worthy to be considered your friend. If we have not seen very much of each other we have at least been acquainted for a long time. I remember your daughter when she was almost a baby. I remember. He checked himself as he was approaching a theme that might pain her. You remember my husband," she said, interpreting his embarrassment. It is of him I want to talk to you. I think you are good and true, Mr. Floristan, and I am going to trust you with the secrets of the dead. I am going to show you some old letters, letters written to my dear dead husband, which I would not show to anybody in this world if I did not hope that some good, some satisfaction to me and to my daughter might come out of the light these letters can give. My dear Mrs. Arden, you do not surely hope that after all these years the murderer will be found through any clue that the past can afford. I don't know what I hope, but I want to find a woman who loved my husband very tenderly and truly before ever I saw his face. She was a friendless girl in this city, a girl who had to work for her living, but her letters are the outcome of a refined nature and I feel a melancholy interest in her. My heart yearns towards the woman who loved my husband and who might have been his wife but for difference of cast. Did your husband tell you about this youthful love affair? He alluded to it laughingly once or twice during our married life, but I knew nothing more than that he had once been in love with a French grisette until the week before my second marriage. I had a curious fancy before that great change in my life to go back upon the past. There was a regretfulness in her tone at this point which was a revelation to Floristan.  I had been through them more than once before and had classified and arranged them as well as I could, but I suppose I was not very business-like in my way of doing this, for among some commonplace letters from old college friends I found a little packet of letters in a woman's hand which I had overlooked before. She opened her desk as she spoke and took out a small packet of letters tied with red tape. There had been no sentimental indulgence in the way of satin ribbon for the milliner's poor little letters. The tape was faded and old and it was the same piece which Robert Hattwell's own hand had tied around them. Please read one or two of those letters and tell me if they speak to your heart as they spoke to mine, she said, as she put the packet into Floristan's hand. He untied the tape, counted the letters, seven in all, and then began to read the letter of the earliest date. Rue Chauve-sur-ry, Foubourg, St. Antoine, 9th May It was like a day spent in heaven while we were together yesterday. I felt as if it was years and years since I had seen green fields and blue water. Oh, the beautiful river and the island where we dined! I did not think there was anything so lovely within an hour's journey from Paris. And how good it was of you to give a poor, hard-working girl so much pleasure! I have been in Paris more than a year and no one ever showed me a glimpse of the country until yesterday. My brother was too busy with his inventions and there was no one else. I wonder at your goodness that you should take so much trouble for a poor girl, and that you should not be a shame to be seen with anyone so shabby and insignificant. Three other letters followed, telling the same story of a Sunday in the environs of Paris, of the woods and the river and the rapture of being with him. Gradually the pen had grown bolder and it was of love the girl wrote to her lover, a humble, confiding romantic girlish love which took no thought for the moral, asked no questions, suffered no agonies of doubt. She wrote as if her happiness were to know no change as if those Sunday excursions to pleasant places were to go on forever. She told him how she had gone to Mass before she met him at the railway station or the steamboat pier and how she had prayed for him at the altar of the Blessed Virgin. The later letters had a more serious tone and breathed the fear that her romance must come to an end. It has been like a dream to know you and be loved by you, she wrote, but is the dream to end in darkness and the long dull life that would be left for me if you were to go away and forget me? I suppose it must be so. I have been too happy to remember that such happiness could not last. You will go back to your own country and fall in love with the young English lady and forget that you ever spent happy days on the sand, laughing and talking with your poor twanette. You will forget the arbor on the island where we dined in the twilight, while music and singing went past us in the boats, while we sat hidden behind vine leaves and heard everything without being seen. Oh, how sweet it was. I shall never see any more stars like those that shone upon us as we came from Mardi one night, sitting side by side on a bench on the roof of the train. I shall never see the river in Paris without thinking that it is the same river on which our boat has drifted. Oh, so lazily, while we have talked and forgotten everything except our own faces and our own voices. All that was beautiful in the river and the landscape seemed not outside us but a part of ourselves and of our love. There was more in the same strain, but later the key changed to saddest minor. I know you cannot marry me. Indeed, I never thought I hoped to be your wife. I only wanted our love to go on as long as it could. I wanted it to go on forever, asking no more than to see you now and then, once a week, once in a month even, ah, even once a year. I could live all through a long dull year in the hope of seeing you for one blessed hour on your year's day. Is that too much to ask? You cannot guess how little would content me, anything except to lose you forever. The day that you say to me, goodbye, Twanette, we shall never meet again will be the day of my death.  I cannot live without you. I think of you in every hour of the day. I think of you with every stitch my needle makes through the long hours in which I sit at work. The sprig of willow you picked when we were in the boat last Sunday is like a living thing to me, as precious as if it had a soul and could sympathize with me in my love and my sorrow. Floristan met on till the last word in the last letter. Do those sad little letters touch you as they touched me? asked Clara. Yes, they are pretty little letters. They are full of a tender sentimental love which might mean much or little. There is no knowing how much reality there is in all this sentiment. Women are actresses from their cradle. They can simulate everything, love or hate or pride or jealousy. Nothing comes amiss to them. But there is a pretty little layer of self-abnegation in these letters which takes my fancy just as it took yours. I believe that the sentiment in them is real, said Clara, and I want to know what became of this poor girl after the last letter was written. I want to know whether she is living or dead. Remember, it was her name that was used to lure my husband to his death. There must have been some link between the murderer and that girl. Ah, I remember. There was a woman's name mentioned. Yes, Colonel McDonald heard the name. It was Antoinette. He had heard my husband speak of a grisette with whom he had once been in love. Do you think the girl was concerned in the murder? The girl who wrote those letters? No, assuredly not. There are women whose slighted love turns to remorseless hate, said Florestan. Not such a woman as the writer of those letters. She is so humble, so unselfish. She accepts her fate in advance. No, I am sure she was a good woman. I want to find her, if I can, to help her if she is poor and friendless. I want to find her for her own sake, but still more for mine. She may be able to give the clue to the murderer. Her name was used as a lure, and very few people can have known that Robert ever cared for that girl. The man who made that vile use of her name must have known of that old love affair. He may have been the brother of whom she writes. My dear Mrs. Arden, would it not be wiser, in your circumstances with new ties, a husband who worships you, a daughter who adores you? Would it not be wiser to draw a curtain over that one dreadful scene in your life, that one terrible loss which you suffered nearly eight years ago? I cannot. I cannot forget the man I loved with all my heart and strength, exclaimed Clara passionately. Do you think, because I have married again, that he is forgotten?  No, I have not forgotten. I have married a good man whom I honour and esteem. I am as happy as the most devoted love can make me, but I do not forget. Ever since I found those letters I have been brooding over the possibility of the murderer being discovered by that woman's agency. Do you think that if her brother was the murderer she would betray him? I think she would no more have forgiven his murderer than I have, even if he is her brother. But she would hardly put a rope round his neck. Perhaps not. Only find her for me if you can, Mr. Florestan, and I shall be deeply grateful. You who know Paris so well and who are living here may have opportunities. If she is to be found I will find her. But these letters were written more than twenty years ago, and the cleverest police agent in Paris might fail in tracing her after such an interval. Remember we do not even know her surname. The letters have only one signature, Dwanet. There is the address of the house in which she lived. That is the only clue. We must begin upon that. You are very good. You can understand perhaps why I appeal to you instead of to my husband. In the first place he is a dreamer and thinker rather than a man of action. He knows very little of Parisian life and he would not know how to set to work. And in the second place it might trouble him to know that my mind has been dwelling upon the past. I understand perfectly. I conclude that you have told him nothing about these letters. Not a word. There is one circumstance connected with your husband's death which has always mystified me, said Florestan after a thoughtful pause. How came the murderer, a foreigner and altogether unconnected with your husband's life at Lamford, to be so well informed about his plans, to know that on such a day and at such an hour he would be on his way to Lincoln's Inn with a large sum of money upon his person? The man's plans had evidently been made some days in advance. The lodging was taken with one deadly intent. The woman who acted as an accomplice must have been taught her part in advance. The flight to the Riviera with the money must have been deliberately thought out for there was not an hour lost in the disposal of the notes. A little hesitation, a few hours delay, and the police would have been able to track the plunder. Everything was arranged and carried out with a diabolical precision which argues foreign knowledge. I have puzzled over the same question till my brain has reeled, answered Clara. Someone must have given the information, one of our servants, a lawyer's clerk perhaps. I dismissed every servant we had at that time with the one exception of my daughter's nurse as soon as I recovered from my illness. I would not have anybody about me who might even unconsciously have helped to bring about my husband's death. All our servants knew what was going to happen. We talked of the purchase very often, and at dinner on the evening before Robert went to London we discussed his visit to the bank and to the lawyers, and his appointment to lunch with Colonel McDonald at the club. It is just possible that the murderer was in your house that evening, said Florestan, and that he obtained detailed information from one of your maid's servants. Women are such fools, and women of that class will believe anything that a smooth tongue tells them. It was the year after the war, a time when London swarmed with exiled communists. It is possible that this girl's brother was among them, that he harbored an old grudge against her lover, that he took pains to find out all he could about your husband's circumstances, and hearing of the purchase money which was to be carried from the bank to the lawyer's office conceived the daring idea of a murder and robbery in broad daylight in a house full of people. I take it that the police would make some investigations in your household, although the murder occurred in London. I know very little of what happened at that time. I was too ill to be told anything that was being done, and after I recovered I had too great a horror of the past. I dared not speak about my husband's death. Years have brought calmness. I can think of it now and reason about it, though I shall never understand why God cut short that happy life in so cruel a manner. I shall never understand the wisdom of my heavy chastisement. Florestan was silent, pitying her with all his heart, both for the husband she had lost and for the husband to whom she had given herself in a loveless union. He had seen enough of Ambrose Arden and his wife to divine that there was profound affection on the husband's side, and on the wife's only the sad submission of a woman who has given away her life in self-abnegation, pitying a passion which she cannot reciprocate. Daisy and her betrothed came into the room at this moment. She laden with bunches of white lilac and marichal kneel roses as tribute to her mother. It seemed to Florestan as if spring itself had come dancing into the room, incarnate in that graceful figure in a cream-colored frock and sailor hat shining upon him out of those sunny hazel eyes, giving warmth and brightness to the atmosphere. She shook hands with Florestan in the friendliest way, too friendly to be flattering to a man who was accustomed to exercise a somewhat disturbing influence upon the other sex. But a girl who was engaged to be married has sometimes no eyes for any man except her lover. Florestan had experienced that kind of thing, and he had experienced the other kind of thing from girls who are ever on the alert for fresh conquests and who are only stimulated to audacity by the knowledge that they have secured one man for their bond at slave. Daisy had no hidden thoughts. She was just as simple and unaffected, just as unconscious of her own charms as she had been four years ago when she was still a child, with all the child's thoughts and pleasures. How different she was from the type of woman he had once compared with Dante's Beatrice, with Petrax Laura, the splendid and grandiose among women, the queen of beauty in the world's tournament, that magnificent type had forever ceased to fascinate Gilbert Florestan. He stayed to luncheon half reluctantly, yet unable to resist his inclination to linger. Ambrose Arden came in from his book sale plushed with triumph. He had gratified desires of longstanding by the purchase of certain early editions of French classics, Villon, Ronsa, Clément Mareau. His son made light of the father's craze for books with a certain imprint. What does it matter who printed a book or where or when, he cried? The book is only a voice, the voice of the dead. It is a spiritual thing. It is the soul belonging to a body that has long been dust. How can it matter what outward form the soul wears? Upon what kind of rags the divine speech has been printed, what kind of leather keeps the book from falling to pieces? I am amazed when I see people going into ecstasies about binding, except as furniture to write in a room. For a book I really care about, the outward form is of not the smallest account to me. You are young, Cyril. His father answered gently. Youth has the kernel of the nut. Age must be content with the husk. Old men have to invent pleasures and passions. There is so much that they have left behind them forever. That is a very reasonable explanation of the collector's mania, my dear father, answered Cyril. But it is a great deal too early in the day for you to begin to meditate upon the consolations of old age.  Daisy and I are like the young birds, just peeping out of our nest at the rosy glow of dawn. The River Lawn Party left Paris two days after Clara's interview with Gilbert Florestan. He seeing them off at the station, and attention which to Cyril Arden seemed somewhat superfluous. Superfluous also, the basket of Maréchal Niel roses which Florestan handed into the railway carriage after the ladies had taken their seats. You will have your own roses tomorrow, he said to Mrs. Arden, and if they are not quite so fine as these importations from the south, I dare say you will like them better because they are homegrown. I shall think of you all at River Lawn and of my empty house close by. Why don't you come and fill it? asked Clara. I mean to do so before long. I shall give up vagrant diplomacy and settle down as a small Berkshire squire. I begin to feel that I am not of the stuff which makes ambassadors and that a roving life is all very well till a man approaches his thirtieth birthday, but begins to pawl afterwards. My Paris is as familiar as an old song. I know all her tricks and her manners. He shook hands with mother and daughter, said goodbye, yet lingered and said goodbye again until stern officials ordered him off. He loitered at the carriage door till the very last moment. He sighed as he walked away from the terminus and he was full of thought through all the dreary length of the rue de la faillette. Happy fellow to be beginning life was such a girl as that for his companion, he mused thinking of Cyril.  Ever I care again for woman kind, my love will be just such a girl as that. I wonder if there are many such, and where they are to be found. He wondered too though he scarcely shaped the thought, whether if the world were rich in girls as innocent and as bright endowed with all the qualities that made Margaret Hattrell charming, he should be attracted to any other specimen of the kind as he had been attracted to her. He wondered whether it might not be the individual rather than the type which had fascinated him. He pondered these questions as if in a purely speculative mood, but he was careful not to answer them. There were doubts which floated through his mind like cloudlets in a summer sky, and in his mind there floated also the image of a girl's face, fresh and fair, with no taint or tarnish of the world, no artificial embellishment of paint or powder, pencil or brush upon its pure young beauty. The image haunted him long after the train had carried Clara Arden and her daughter to Calais, long after they had settled down quietly at River Lawn. He did not forget the commission which Mrs. Arden had entrusted to him. He went to the rue Chauve-sur-Y on the morning after that leave-taking at the station and found the house which, if there had been no alteration in the numbering of the street within the last twenty-two years, must once have sheltered the girl who loved Robert Hattrell. It was a narrow house with a shoemaker's shop on the ground floor, kept by one of those small traders who do more in the way of repairing old boots and shoes than of selling new ones. There was a side door which was open and a narrow passage leading to a staircase where there was just enough light to reveal the dirt and shabbiness of the walls and the indications of poverty upon every landing. Floristan went to the top of the house without meeting anybody, but he heard the voice of children upon the first floor, a domestic quarrel upon the second, with voices raised to their highest pitch and accents of recrimination while on the top story a woman was singing a monotonous sentimental melody in apparent unconsciousness of the strife below. It was evident there were separate households upon each story. The sing-song voice of the woman in the garret was so suggestive of a peaceful menage that Floristan took courage to knock at her door, which was opened by the singer, a faded woman with a gentle long-suffering countenance, a washed-out cotton gown and a little cashmere shawl pinned across attenuated shoulders. A baby in a cradle in the corner near the hearth accounted for the monotonous chant which Floristan had heard outside. He apologized for his intrusion and explained that he was in search of a woman who had lived in that house twenty-two years before. Would Madame direct him to the oldest inhabitant of the house? You won't have far to go to find her, answered the woman. There's only one lodger who has been in this house over two or three years, and I fancy that she must have lived here since the taking of the Bastille. Nobody knows how old she is, but it wouldn't surprise me to be told she was a hundred. If she has sense enough or memory enough to answer your questions, she ought to be able to tell you anything you want to know about former lodgers. Who is this person? Mademoiselle Lafond, a poor pensioner of a noble family in Touraine. She is a distant relation of the Marquis de Lafond who allows her a tiny pension. Her grandfather and grandmother were guillotined in ninety-two, and her father was left a helpless slad in Paris. She will tell you her story. She loves to talk of her youth and its dangers. And though she has a very poor memory for events that happened yesterday, she remembers the smallest things connected with her childhood. If that is the condition of her mind, she may have forgotten a lodger of twenty-two years ago, suggested Florestan. I can't answer for that. I can only tell you that she must have been in this house with your lodger. If you want to talk to her, I can take you down to her room. She is very poor, but her room is always clean and neat. She has just strength enough left to attend to that, and when her sweeping and dusting are done, she sits all day by the window rolling her thumbs and talking to her canary bird. Poor old soul! I feel interested in her from your description, and shall be much obliged if you will introduce me to her. CHAPTER XIII. OF ONE LIFE, ONE LOVE, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. XIII. UNDERCURRENCE. The woman looked at her sleeping baby to assure herself that he was not likely to awake for the next few minutes, and then accompanied Florestan to the landing below where she knocked at the door of a room towards the front of the house. A feeble old voice called to her to enter and she entered, leaving Florestan outside. There was a brief parley after which he was admitted to a narrow slip of a room with a deep-set window and a small fireplace in the corner. The furniture consisted of an old walnut wood wardrobe with heavy brass handles, much too large for the room, a narrow bedstead, a comfortable armchair, and a small round table. There was a closet on one side of the room which served the old lady for her toilet. The wall space, where not obscured by the tall wardrobe, was covered with old-fashioned prints and colored lithographs in which might have been read, an abstract and brief chronicle of the time, since the fall of the Bastille which was depicted in one of the most noticeable of the engravings. They were for the most part scenes of revolution or bloodshed, the death of the duke-tongue, the days of June, the coup d'état, the execution of Maximilian, the Commune. There were coarsely executed prints of half a century ago in marked contrast with the superior art of later years.  The withered old face had all the traces of good looks and of good blood, and there was no lack of intelligence in the keen gray eyes which scrutinized the stranger. Take the trouble to seat yourself, monsieur. C'est Mlle Lafond, pointing graciously to the only unoccupied chair which was placed opposite her own. My good friend Yanda, with a glance at the door through which Florestan's introducer had retired, tells me you want information about some former lodger. I was born in this house and I have lived in it nearly ninety years. That is a curious thing to happen in such a restless city as Paris, said Florestan, interested in the sad old face the dull and barren life. How came it, mademoiselle, that your life was thus uneventful? There are many such lives in every great city, monsieur, lives that are of little more account than the life of a limpet on a rock. My father was flung like a weed on the ocean of Paris, a lot of sixteen without friends or home. His father was an advocate, prosperous, successful. His mother was a beauty, sought after by the best people in Paris. All his boyhood had been spent in the stormy atmosphere of the revolution, but the troubles of those dreadful years seem hardly to have touched his home. His father was in constant employment and had a voice in the National Assembly where his eloquence made him a man of mark. His mother's friends still flocked round her except when now and then the guillotine made a sudden gap in the circle. The Dominicans in whose house my father had been educated were broken up and dispersed. He was at home in idleness, enjoying his life and all the fever of the time, waiting till his father should have leisure to take up the thread of his education, hoping to follow in his father's footsteps as a successful advocate, full of belief in the golden harvest of that bloody seed which was being sown broadcast through the fairest cities of France. Boy as he was he was already an ardent politician and had the entrée of more than one club where opinion was ultra-red. The knighty went home from a turbulent debate at one of his clubs to find the servants in tribulation at his home desolate. His father and mother had been arrested and taken to the Conciergerie. Within a week they had both passed by the gate which Fouquette Ville kept on the road to eternity. Their more fortunate friends were powerless to help them or afraid to interfere. My grandfather had neglected his private interests for the cause of the Republic and he died deeply in debt. Creditors took possession of house and property and my father wandered about the streets, homeless and hungry, too proud to appeal to his father's friends. The old woman paused for a few moments and then seeing that her listener was warmly interested continued in her slow deliberate accents, quietly reciting a story which she had told to all comers for more than half a century. Fouquette's brought him in his desolation to the threshold of this house. He sat down upon the step in front of the shop door, not because he chose that place above any other but because he had reached the limit of his strength and must need drop somewhere. The shop is kept by a shoemaker now and it was kept by a shoemaker then, a provencelle whose father was head gardener to Madame du Barry at Lucien and who had come to Paris to seek his fortune in the golden days of court favor. Madame du Barry's head was laid low and court favor was all at an end. François Vial and his wife were struggling on as best they might, mending and making shoes forhead Republicans. They were not too poor to have pity on your father, I take it, said Florestan. Their hearts were larger than their means, monsieur.  He told them that he was the son of suspects who had been guillotined but that did not frighten them. They took him into their home and nursed him through a long illness, a low fever, the result of grief and privation. He had been wandering about the streets nearly a week before they took compassion upon him, wandering about in sleeping in dark corners of the city with only a few soot between him and absolute starvation. François Vial and his wife were childless and they took a fancy to the orphan and taught him their trade. He had no other friend in the world to help him, for those of his father's friends who had not been swept away upon the strong tide of blood had left the country and there was no one to help him except these good people. So he who was to have been an advocate and a senator was content to make and mend the shoes and he fell in love with an orphan niece of François Vial, a little fair-haired girl who had comforted him in his sorrow for his dead parents and he married her when he was three and twenty and when the new fledged empire was beginning in splendor and glory. He had quite reconciled himself to his humble avocation. He was content to remain what destiny had made him. His mind seemed to have adapted itself easily to that humble sphere. I have often wondered that it was so that the blood in his veins did not revolt against that daily drudgery that narrow-sordid life. It was strange assuredly that he never tried to get back into the sphere from which he had dropped. I think that in his long illness when his mind was wandering most of the time all the links that connected him with his past life may have weakened till the influence of that life was nearly lost and he was able to begin a new existence among low-born people without feeling much pain in the change. At any rate he never made any struggle to regain his lost place in the world and later when François Vial and his wife had saved enough money to buy a little vineyard and all of Orchard in Provence he was glad to take to the business and the house in which he had worked and it was in this house the tie his only surviving offspring was born. How came it that you never married Manmousel? asked Florestan after he had expressed all due interest in her narrative. Those who asked me to marry were people with whom I could not have been happy. It may be that something of the pride of race which had died out of my father's mind was revived in me. I always felt it a hard thing that my father Eugène Lafont as I saw the name written in old documents should be a shoemaker. This tweet was not so shabby in my youth as it has been for the last forty years, but it was not a vulgar neighborhood even then and I used to walk in the fashionable quarters of Paris over Sunday afternoon with my father and used to feel that fate had used us hardly. I saw the Marquis de Lafont drive by in his carriage and my father told me that I came of his proud race. He made a joke of the difference between us, but it cut me to the quick that we who were of the same family should be so wide apart. My father and mother both died before I was thirty and I was left alone in the world. They had just been able to make a living, but they had saved only as much as served to pay their debts and to bury them. The house and the business passed into other hands, but I stayed here like a piece of old furniture. I have been a lodger in this room in which you find me ever since my father's death. I was able to earn my own living when I was eighteen by fine needlework and I worked at the same business for fifty years. I was seventy years of age before I ever needed help from anyone, but at that age my sight began to fail and it would have gone hard for me if the Marquis de Lafont had not chance to hear about me from the mistress of the large lingerie shop for which I had worked all those years. The Marquis took pity upon my helplessness and pleaded my cause with the Marquis who came to see me and looked through my papers and made out my father's relationship to the great family. Convinced of this he granted me a small pension which his house steward has paid me ever since. His generosity has made my declining days peaceful and free from care. I rise from my bed every morning with the assurance that my daily bread is provided for me, and I know that I shall not lie in a pauper's grave, for my noble kinsman has promised me a niche in the family vault at Père Lachaise. I pray for the Marquis and his family every day, and I hope that the prayers of a grateful old woman may be heard by the blessed virgin whose divine pity has secured my loneliness. But you have not been altogether lonely, I hope, mademoiselle. You have found sympathy and friendship even within these walls, said Floristan gently leading up to the question which he wanted to ask. Yes, I have had friends here, friends who came and went. It has often seemed to me that this house is like a caravansary in an Arabian desert. My friends were so quickly gone, like travellers who stay only for a single night. Some have been very good to me. I would have loved them if I had dared. You want to ask me about a lager in this house, Madame Manon told me. Was the person here in the long past? Two and twenty years ago. Ah, that is not the past. The friends I remember best are those of fifty years ago. Who was the person you are curious about? A milliner's apprentice, called Twanette. I do not know her surname. A milliner's apprentice, repeated the old woman musingly. There have been many such in the attics. Bright girl faces, sad girl faces, have passed by my door through the long years, and have faded and vanished like my own dreams. Twanette, Twanette, Twanette. She repeated still musing. Floristan waited patiently while the slow memory of old age wandered in the dim corridors of the past. Presently the old woman took up her missile and began to look through the well-thumbed pages. Between the leaves there were many of those little pictures of Madonna, Saints, and Martyrs, which Romanists love, and every one of those little engravings with their lace borders was a souvenir of some vanished friend, and on every one of them there was some scrap of writing. She looked through them slowly and carefully, and at last came to a little picture of St. Stephen, on the back of which was written. To mademoiselle Lafond from her loving Twanette, St. Stephen's Day, 1857. There is the name at least, said the spinster. Twanette. Yes, I remember. She was a sweet girl, and I was very fond of her, and I think I helped her to escape a great danger. But she vanished like the rest of my friends. They were all shadows. There is only this lonely room in that bird-cage with its changing occupant that remain. I try to cheat myself with the fancy that the bird is always the same, but even he changes. I put away my poor little dead canary, and buy myself a new one, and call him by the old name, but it is long before he gets to know me as the dead bird did. Ah, monsieur, that is what makes life hard, that it should be so short for some time, and so long for others. Yes, mademoiselle, that is a misery we all feel. But it is some consolation to have lived a blameless life as you have. Limpets live blameless lives, retorted mademoiselle Lafond with a touch of scorn. There is no more merit in my blameless life than in Olympettes. But you were asking about Twanette. Yes, please tell me all you can, her surname in the first place. Impossible, I have quite forgotten it. What was the danger from which you helped to save her? Her romantic love of a man who was her superior in station, an Englishman. You do not think that any evil came out of that love? It almost broke the girl's heart no more evil than that. I believe the man meant honorably, though he trifled with a girl who adored him. He did not mean to betray her. She was touched by her love for him. He gave her some half-dozen joints in the villages near Paris, tête à tête Sunday afternoons upon the Seine, which are not always so harmless as in this case. He respected her innocence and her friendliness, and she was able to respect herself. I was her only confidante, and I warned her of the peril which she ran when she gave her heart to a man who was very unlikely to marry her. She had not long come from the south, and she had only one relation in Paris, a brother who did not often come near her. Do you know how the brother earned his living? He was an assistant in a chemist shop. Did you ever see him? Two or three times? Twanette brought him into this room to show him off and to let him talk to me. She was proud of him, because he was cleverer than most young men of his station, but I don't think he was as kind to her as he might have been, seeing that she was a stranger and alone in this great city. Did he know of her love affair? Not at the beginning, but afterwards, at my advice, she told him all about her Sunday joints with the Englishman. He made a great fuss and swore that the Englishman should marry her, and although my poor Twanette intruded him not to interfere, he evidently did so, for a few days after their conversation the girl received a letter from her admirer, beating her farewell, and enclosing an English bank note for two thousand five hundred freks. She brought the letter to me in her despair. She was a broken-hearted poor child. She told me she had never hoped to marry him. She only wanted to be with him for a little while now and then, as she had been at Bougeval or Asnière, just to see him and to hear his voice, just to know that he cared for her, though she would never be more to him than his humble friend. And now he bade her farewell for ever. His letter was a kind letter, a gentleman's letter, written in very good French. I tried to make her understand that there was no other course for the Englishman to take if he were an honest man. If she could not be his wife, she could be nothing to him. I told her that it was kind of him to send her a parting gift, which would be a dot for her, when she should marry some honest young man in her own station. Was she willing to accept his gift? asked Florestan. Not she. The poor romantic child burst into a fresh flood of tears and asked me if I could think her so base as to take a price for her broken heart. He has been very cruel to me, she said, and the cruelest act of all was to send me this money. I shall send it back to him. I begged her to think better of it and to remember that if her health failed her, or work should be hard to get by and by, that there would be nothing between her and starvation. If there were not, she said, I would not eat the price of my love. I did not sell him my heart. I gave it to him freely and would again and again and again. I love him as I love God and his saints. Did she return the note? It passed out of her hands, but whether it reached the giver is more than I can say. She had written her letter and enclosed the money in the envelope when her brother happened to meet her. His visits had been more frequent than usual since he found out her love story. He questioned her about the letter and she told him what he had done. He approved and offered to deliver the letter, telling her that there would be a risk in sending so much money through the post. It had been delivered to her by hand, I may observe. My poor Twanette was simple enough to trust him, but whether the money ever reached its destination is doubtful. I never liked her brother's countenance or manner, and I certainly would not have trusted him with any delicate commission. Did you see much of him after that time, mademoiselle? No.  I saw more of her than ever, poor child, for she had no one to take her into the country on a Sunday afternoon, and her Sundays were mostly spent in this room. She was very good to me. She used to read to me and share me with her company, though it was too plain that all the happiness had gone out of her own life. She lived in this house till the dark days of the commune, and in all that time she had no sweetheart, no friend except an old woman. She was a splendid worker, industrious, economical, as good as gold. And so the years crept on, she leading her dull, uncomplaining life, and I saw the Second Empire crumble and fall into ruin as I had seen the First and Greater Empire. After the troubles began, Twanette's brother took her away to London with him at an hour's warning. He had been entangled with the Communists, and he was at no small risk of being sent to New Caledonia. From that time to this I have heard nothing of her or of him. I think if she had prospered and been happy she would have written to me, so I fear that all has not gone well with her. If you would only remember that young man's name, said Florestan. His name? Yes, I remember. His name was Claude. Claude Morel. I thank you most cordially, mademoiselle, for the amiability with which you have answered all my questions, began Florestan, when the old woman interrupted him. Do not suppose it has been irksome to me to talk to you? She said with her sly smile. My life is very lonely, and I have few intelligent people to talk to.  You have let me talk about myself and my poor little history. It is always a pleasure to tell one's own history. If you have pleased yourself, dear mademoiselle, you have done me a service all the same, and I should like to present you with some little souvenir of our conversation. I cannot venture to offer you money. Pray do not, said the little old lady drawing up her head with a certain hotir which did not ill become her. I am very poor, and I live upon charity, but it is a kinsman's charity. I have enough for my small wants, and I like to think myself a lady, though my father was a shoemaker. Believe me, I know how to honor good birth and refined manners wherever I meet with them, replied Florestan deferentially. I want, therefore, to offer you some little gift, something for this room in which you spend your days, for instance, which you may receive without the slightest derogation of dignity. Ah, monsieur, do not laugh at an old woman, more than old enough to be your grand-mother. It seems a satire to talk of my dignity in this one poor room which serves me for bedroom, parlor, and kitchen. Ah, but dignity does not depend on surroundings except so far as they belong to character. The exquisite neatness of this room would alone tell me that I am in the apartment of a lady. He looked round the poor little room so scantily furnished, so old and faded as to woodwork and wallpaper, yet with that look of airiness and perfect purity which some women know how to give to the poorest room. One thing only seemed to him out of harmony, and seeing that men was elle à faune liked to talk to him, and was quite ready to give him her confidence, he ventured to express his wonder at the style of art which he had chosen to adorn her walls. You wonder that I should surround myself with scenes of bloodshed, she said, with the image of the guillotine which made my poor father an orphan in the morning of his life, with the picture of the fall of that fortress, with whose ancient towers there fell the old aristocracy of France, never to rise again with the old power or the old influence over the fate of men. It is a strange taste, perhaps, but I like to look at the dreadful records of that revolution which robbed me of fortune and station before I was born, in which has given me so little except loud talk and empty promises in place of all it took away. I like to brood over the dark days that overshadowed Paris before this century and I were born. It is a morbid fancy, perhaps, but it pleases me. The history of my country is written in blood, and I like to read that history. Do the pictures never spoil your sleep or mix themselves with your dreams? asked Florestan. Very seldom. I have this under my pillow and I have her blessed image to reassure me.  What shall I bring you to decorate your room, mademoiselle? Great Florestan, smiling at the little old lady so serene in her simple faith. Ah, monsieur, you tempt me to impose on your generosity. And then, almost reluctantly, the ancient spinster confessed that there was one thing for which she had been longing for the last thirty years ever since she had begun to feel age creeping on with increasing sensitiveness to cold. She had longed for a duvet, a little idle-down quilt to put upon her bed. Every French woman of any substance has her duvet, but how was she, whose little pension just served for food and fire, to save enough money to buy herself a duvet? It was not possible. She had been trying for thirty years, but when by much heart pinching and scraping there were a few francs in the Tielia there came a sickness and the Tielia had to be broken to pay for medicine and wine and soup. You shall have the duvet this evening. You shall sleep under it to-night, cried Floristan, and shanted at being able to gratify a long cherished wish of this patient creatures. He thought of the lonely monotony of her life with inexpressible sadness. Could life in that gloomy old fortress which once stood not far off from this gloomy street have been very much more dismal than life in this one small room over the cobbler's shop? Such a street! Not one pleasing object, not one spot of brightness or color to be seen from the window, strained one's eye and rick one's neck as one might. Nothing but the dull gray houses over the way and the dull gray street right and left of the window. Floristan not only promised the Eiderdown, but he promised also to go and see him as a lapeau again, and then, after gently touching the wasted hand, he took up his hat and bowed himself out of the room. His first visit was to the Beaumarchie, where he chose an Eiderdown quilt of the very best quality, covered with rose-colored silk. It was a relief to him to think that there would be one little bit of vivid color in that long, neutral-tinted street, though nobody would see it except the little old lady. When the warm weather begins, I will center some pots of stalks and wall-flowers from the flower market and beg her to put them on her windowsill as an act of Christian charity, he said to himself. It is too dreadful to think of people living in such a street, while within half an hour's walk there are the laughing gardens and the white villas, the gilded gates and glass porches, the bright-colored folly and frivolity of the Avenue de l'Emperatrice, or whatever these Republicans call the place. I only remember the old names that I knew when I was a boy. The Eiderdown dispatched to the old lady, Florestan's next visit was to a man he had sometimes had occasion to employ, while he was secretary of legation, a man who may be loosely described as a private detective. To this person he imparted his desire to find out the whereabouts and occupation, surroundings and character of a certain Claude Morel, employed before the Commune as a chemist assistant, subsequent moat and manner of life unknown. I have reason to believe that he was concerned in some of the outrages of that period, said Florestan finally, and that when the troops from Versailles got into Paris he found it prudent to get out with as little delay as possible. If he was active and influential at that time I ought to be able to find out all about him, said Monsieur Jaluc, for there has been a pretty sharp lookout kept upon those gentlemen, especially upon those who escaped a voyage over the seas. Give me a few days to make my inquiries, Mr. Florestan, and I will call you with the result. This was all that Gilbert Florestan could do towards the fulfilment of his promise to Mrs. Arden. He wrote a long letter to her after his interview with Memoiselle Lafond relating all that he had learned about Antoinette Morel. It was a relief to his mind to be able so to write, for when entrusted with his commission he had feared that his investigation of Robert Hattrell's life in Paris might reveal an intrigue which it would not be well for the wife to know. Happily in this memory of a past love or perhaps only a passing fancy all was innocent. A city idol set in a young man's history like a flower between the leaves of a book. Florestan went again to the somber old salon in the Sanguyom where the three women lived in luxurious seclusion. He was the only visitor on this occasion although it was the evening which Madame Quixada set apart for her friends. It was obvious that her circle was of the smallest. The room was full of flowers as before, costliest flowers. Masses of azaleas and white lilac lighted up the dark paneled walls. A shallow vase, veiled with gardenias, exhaled an almost oppressive perfume in the drowsy atmosphere. And Dolores wore a cluster of heavy yellow roses fastened amidst the rich black lace of her bodice with a diamond pin. These things told of wealth from some source or other and Florestan suspected that the source was not altogether holy. Louise Mercier received him with a gentle smile. Her plain black gown and complete absence of ornament contrasted oddly with the subdued splendor of her aunt and cousin, but the melancholy expressed in her face was hardly more pronounced than Mamoiselle Quixada's ennui. And Florestan told himself that the young and lovely woman was not much happier than the faded spinster whose age he was unable to guess. That iron gray hair was evidently premature, and the deep lines in the face were those which sorrow plows in young faces rather than the wrinkles of advancing years. Florestan found his society appreciated by Dolores, who brightened up his coming and seemed to enjoy his conversation. She talked very little herself and she was evidently afraid of her mother, but she was not without intelligence. There was something in her look and manner which suggested the idea of an imprisoned spirit, a nature bound and trampled, a bird caught in a net. Monsieur and Madame du Turc arrived soon after Florestan, and the professor entertained the small assembly with various rêveries, sweets, nocturnes and gavots of his own composition, which were so impressed with the stamp of the composer's individuality that to Florestan's untrained ear they sounded all alike. The utmost he could find to say about them was that they were strikingly original. It was a very quiet evening. Louise Marseille sat in her favorite corner and only replied when she was spoken to. At ten o'clock Madame Quillada invited her guests into an adjoining room where tea and sherburts and daintiest sandwiches were served with some distinction. Florestan noted the mass of silver and delicate porcelain informed his own conclusions. Florestan grew livelier with the stimulus of this light refreshment. The excellent du Turc devoured foie gras sandwiches by the dozen and drank much straw-colored tea out of shallow egg shell cups, while his worthy wife nibbled sweetcakes talking in a gentle strain all the time to Madame Quillada about the delinquencies of her latest bonnetouffée. This entertainment lasted nearly an hour, and the clock chimed eleven soon after the little party returned to the salon. Florestan approached his hostess to take leave when the door opened suddenly and a man walked unannounced into the room, saluted Madame Quillada with a careless nod as he passed her, and made straight for the piano, near which Dolores was seated talking to the professor. He lent over Dolores and began to talk to her without taking the faintest notice of anyone else in the room. "'You are late, Leon,' said Madame Quillada. "'I had given you up for tonight.' "'I have no doubt you are able to amuse yourself without me,' replied the late arrival with a resentful glance at Florestan. "'May I ask to be introduced to your new friend?' "'Assuredly, if monsieur permits,' Florestan bowed. "'Monsieur Leon du Verdié, Mr. Florestan.' "'Madame Quillada's circle is so small that a stranger's presence always makes an impression, said du Verdié. "'Are you a resident in Paris, Mr. Florestan, or a visitor only? "'Your face seems familiar to me.' "'Very likely, monsieur, since I am a resident and an habitui "'in many places where Parisians are mostly to be found.' "'Du Verdié turned to Dolores, and Florestan was going to wish "'his hostess goodnight, when his attention was attracted "'by Louise Mercé, who had risen from her seat and was "'standing near the door of the dining-room, paler than he "'had ever seen her before, and with her eyes fixed upon "'Du Verdié with an expression of mingled horror and aversion. "'Without a word and with that gaze unchanging to the last, "'she passed into the dining-room shutting the door behind her. "'Du Verdié noticed the manoeuvre with a nervous little laugh. "'Mademoiselle Mercé is no more sociable than usual,' "'he said lightly, as she'd been suffering from one of her "'hysterical attacks.' "'Neither mother nor daughter answered his question, "'and he did not repeat it. "'Florestan changed his mind, and instead of bidding goodnight, "'seeded himself near Madame Quixada's sofa, where he remained "'while the Dutuques took leave, a somewhat lengthy business, "'and while Dolores and the newcomer converged in low voices "'and with their heads very close together.' "'This is the man she loves,' thought Florestan. "'But I don't think this is the man who finds the gilding "'for this luxurious cage.' "'He had made up his mind to outstay the late arrival "'if he could without bad manners, and he occupied himself "'by a profound consideration of the stranger's appearance. "'It was a handsome face and a clever face, but the cleverness "'was closely allied with craft. "'The good looks were marked by obvious indications "'of a premature decay, such decay as rarely comes "'from any other cause than a dissipated and wholly evil life.  "'He had lived much amongst Frenchmen of all grades, "'and he knew what those wicked lines meant.' "'I am sorry for Madame Quixote's daughter,' he said to himself, "'and it was with a real sorrow that he saw the beautiful young head leaning so near the high, narrow forehead prematurely bald and deeply lined, the fresh and pure cheek of girlhood almost touching the cheek of wasted manhood with its livid, bloodless hue and sunken outline. "'Women are like barnacles,' he said. "'They are always ready to fasten upon a wreck.' "'The timepiece chimed midnight. "'He could not decently protract his visit, having arrived at "'nine o'clock. "'Diverdier had a better excuse for lingering, and he evidently "'meant to stay.' "'Madame Quixote begged Florestan to repeat his visit. "'Darara is hardly looked up in answer to his parting "'salutation. "'Her whole being seemed absorbed in Diverdier's half "'whispered utterances.' "'Where did you pick up your new friend?' asked Diverdier "'directly the door closed upon the departing guest. "'At that general miscellany of curiosities, the Dutuque Salon, "'I suppose,' he went on answering his own question. "'Yet he looks a trifle too aristocratic to have come out "'of the Dutuque collection.' "'We met him at Madame Dutuque's all the same,' "'Madame Quixote replied coldly. "'Really? "'And may I ask your motive for making him free of this "'salon?' "'He is a gentleman, and he seemed interested in us. "'In our lonely lives it is pleasant to make an agreeable "'acquaintance whose society cannot compromise us. "'Do you think Perez would approve of such an acquaintance?' "'Perez is in Spain. "'Yes, but he is not going to stay there forever, and when "'he comes back to Paris and finds your English acquaintance "'domesticated here, I doubt if he will be over-pleased. "'He will not make any objection to an occasional visit from "'Mr. Florestan. "'Indeed, there is only one person to whom he seriously "'objects.  "'I accept the prejudice as a compliment. "'And now best of women to business. "'I have been making a proposition to Dolores, but she "'is not an arithmetician, and I cannot inspire her with "'a proper appreciation of the difference between capital "'well-invested and capital-lying idol at a banker's. "'Don't trouble yourself to say another word,' exclaimed "'Madame Quijada. "'I know exactly what is coming. "'You have gotten to some new difficulty on the boss, "'and you want us to help you out of it, as we have done "'before to our everlasting loss. "'I am not in a difficulty, but I have the chance of making "'a great coup, and you may share my luck if you like. "'Thanks for the privilege. "'We are not gamblers. "'This is a certainty. "'The Valley of Dolce Aqua Mineral Works, a valley west of Santa Rosa in the Sonoma country, a valley which is one silver mine. "'Since the creation that wealth has lain there "'unknown undreamt of, it is known only to a chosen few. "'The whole valley has been bought for a song. "'Shares and the property are now to be had at par. "'Once the truth gets known they will go up five hundred percent. "'You know what silver has done for McKay. "'In the Dolce Aqua Valley there is the making of twenty McKays.  "'That is a monosyllabic answer. "'At any rate it is one you can't misunderstand. "'I think it was copper last time, was it not? "'And the time before it was lead, and before that, quick silver. "'What will it be next time, I wonder? "'Perhaps brass. "'My dear Aunt, you are unscientific. "'Bras does not grow in mines. "'No, only on the foreheads of men, I suppose. "'There was a long silence during which Diverdi paced the room "'with a troubled air. "'He was decidedly handsome, and he had a certain style which is attractive among a certain class, though it is the very opposite of good style. He was in evening dress, but there was a carelessness about his costume and an odor of tobacco which hinted that his evening had not been spent in very exacting society. "'Well,' he said at last, looking first at Dolores and then at her mother, "'if you will not go in with me and pull off a fortune, perhaps you will help me buy a loan. "'I have pledged myself to take a hundred shares at five hundred francs per share and have paid a deposit of twenty percent, which will be forfeited if I don't take them up to say nothing of the discredit.  "'I talk with a perfect knowledge of who and what you are,' replied Diverdi in a cold hard voice and with a cruel emphasis upon every word. "'I talk with the knowledge that Dolores has but to lift up her finger in order to get any money she wants out of that old money-bag pares, whom you and she only tolerate because he is a money-bag. "'She has only to say to him, "'I have a caprice which will cost me twenty or thirty thousand francs, a gown, a horse, an orchid, what you will, for the check to be written and the cash placed at her disposal to fling out of the window if she likes. What if he were to guess that the caprice was another name for a lover's necessity?' asked Madame Quijada. "'He will not guess. He is blind and helpless where Dolores is concerned.' "'Well, he is not going to be fooled this time. I forbid my daughter to lend you another Louis. You have bled us enough already, enough for a lifetime. You belong to an insatiable race, the race of gamblers. This course, Monte Carlo, or boss, it is all the same thing. Call the vise by what name you like. It means ruin. And yet if it had not been for one venture of mine you would never have been able to make a new start in life at Madrid as woman of a good family,' said de Verdi, white with anger.  You had better forget that old debt, for fear I should remember it too often,' said the elder woman. There was something in her tone, something in her look that silenced him for a time, and when he spoke next all the insolence was gone from his speech. "'For pity's sake, help me with a few hundred Louis,' he said. "'If you refuse, I am a lost man. And I know you have something in an old stocking, more thousands than I am asking hundreds. You are too clever a woman not to provide for the hazards of the future. If I have put away something for my old age you can't suppose I shall destroy that provision in order to save you from apparel which would be renewed in less than six months. If things are desperate in Paris you had better get out of Paris while you can and try your fortune somewhere else. I never thought this a good place of residence for you.' "'You have made up your mind,' he asked with sudden fierceness. Irrevocably. "'So be it. Good night, Dolores.' He took her in his arms before she was aware, kissed her passionately, and walked to the door. What are you going to do?' "'You will know all about that to-morrow,' he answered, and banged the door behind him to give emphasis to his words. Dolores would have rushed out of the room in pursuit of him, but her mother stopped her on the threshold. "'He means to kill himself,' cried the girl wildly. Not he, child. Of a thousand men who make that kind of threat only one ever realizes it, he belongs to the nine hundred and ninety-nine.'"