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coffin. The street was narrow indeed at

this place, and the men, in endeavouring to avoid a collision, made a

misstep and thrust the gentleman against the wall with the side of the

coffin.

 

He gave a cry that Luc heard distinctly—a terrible sound of terror,

amaze, and despair—and threw up his hands, dropping the cane he

carried. The coffin-bearers recovered their balance and passed on

muttering, but the gentleman remained crouching against the wall,

staring after them, with no effort to move. His terror was so evident

and so incomprehensible that Luc held his breath to watch. The

stranger’s hat had fallen off, and his full powdered curls were

uncovered. Luc could see his breast heaving and his hands clutching at

the wet wall behind him. Presently he raised his face and flung back his

head, as if he were faint or gasping for breath. The garish lamplight

fell full on his countenance, which gave Luc a genuine start of

surprise. It was the most perfectly beautiful, the most attractive face

he had ever seen in man or woman, in painting or sculpture, or, indeed,

ever imagined. M. de Richelieu’s charm was as nothing compared to the

grandeur of this face, which seemed to hold the flower and perfection of

human loveliness even now, when the eyes were closed and the colouring

hidden by the ill-light.

 

The expression of the man was as remarkable as his beauty. Luc had never

seen such anguish, such fear, such utter terror on any countenance of

all the dying and dead he had ever looked on in the war; it was a

haunted look—the look a poet might conceive for a damned soul.

 

After a full moment the man pulled himself together with a long shudder

and knocked again desperately. This time the door was opened almost

instantly, and he staggered into the house, leaving his cane and hat on

the cobbles.

 

A second after the door was opened again and a servant stepped out,

picked up the beaver and cane, retired, and softly closed the door.

 

The curious little incident seemed over. Luc stepped back into his room,

now in total darkness, and was about to call for candles when the window

directly opposite suddenly flashed full of crystal light.

 

From where Luc stood he had a complete picture of the interior of this

room where the light had appeared; it was a very luxurious apartment,

and gleamed the colour of an opal across the dusky street. But Luc’s

attention was arrested, not by the room, but by the two people within

it: one was the gentleman who had just entered the house, the other a

woman of exquisite fairness wearing a gown of white lace and grey silk.

When Luc first looked across she was holding the man by the shoulders

and gazing anxiously into his face; with a languid movement of loathing

and fear he put her hands down. An overblown white rose fell from his

cravat and scattered its petals on the polished floor between them. The

lady made a movement of considerable alarm and distress, and the

gentleman, who seemed never to look at her, cast himself along a gilt

couch, and Luc had another glimpse of his perfect face, with the

expression of almost unendurable fear and gloom, as he raised it for a

moment before hiding it in the satin cushions.

 

The lady, who was herself of great beauty, seemed both angry and

frightened. She retreated from the couch, then, with an obvious start,

saw the uncovered window, came across the room and impatiently lowered

the heavy velvet curtain, which, falling into place, completely shut the

rest of the little scene from Luc’s gaze.

CHAPTER II # A WALLED GARDEN

Luc made little of the incident of the house opposite, but had enough

curiosity to ask the doorkeeper of his own hotel who owned the mansion,

for the extraordinary beauty and terror of the tall man who had arrived

in the sedan remained in his mind even through other thoughts. He was

told that both the houses opposite were empty, and only inhabited by a

caretaker. It was believed they belonged to some noble who was always at

Versailles; at least it was not supposed that they were for sale. Luc,

considerably surprised, was drawn by this to give some attention to the

house where he had last night observed the little scene through the

first-floor window. It was, like the neighbouring mansion, closed and

shuttered, and had an air of long desertion; no sign nor coat of arms

nor any ornamentation distinguished it. It was neither large nor

pretentious, boasted no courtyard, nor even a lamp over the plain door.

It became clear to Luc that it was used for some intrigue, romantic,

political, sordid, or commonplace, and that last night the lady, shaken

out of long caution by her companion’s terror, had carried a lamp into a

front room, forgetting that the shutters had been taken down. Luc would

have thought no more of it, save that he could not easily dismiss the

unusual beauty of the face upturned in the lamplight, nor the peculiar

sick terror shown by a man, presumably on a gallant adventure, at the,

after all, common enough sight of a coffin being carried through the

streets.

 

Yet soon enough his own affairs engrossed him wholly, and the silent

little drama was dismissed from his mind.

 

He answered M. Voltaire’s letter; he longed to wait on him, but dare not

intrude on the great man. M. de Caumont was now in Paris, and Luc went

to see him, taking the eulogy written on his son, Hippolyte de Seytres.

M. de Caumont was warm and pleasant, but Luc was not inspired to show

the tender words he had written on his dead friend. M. de Caumont was

not like his son. Luc keenly felt the difference; his native shyness

rushed over him and tied his tongue. He spoke neither of his hopes, his

letter to M. Amelot, nor of M. de Voltaire’s letter to him. He left M.

de Caumont’s hotel with a feeling of slight depression, and was walking

absorbed in sad thought down the quiet street when a coach drew up and

Carola Koklinska’s voice hailed him.

 

Luc paused and uncovered. The coach was at a standstill beside the posts

that divided the footway from the road; the blind had been pulled aside,

and the lady was looking from the window. Luc had recognized her voice

instantly; he would not so soon have recognized her person. She wore a

dark red “capuchin” closed under the chin, and her hair showed in the

folds of it, white and stiff with pomade.

 

“You in Paris!” she said swiftly. “Why was I not to know?” she added

gravely.

 

His real reasons would have seemed absurd in speech, and he was slow

with inventions; he blushed and looked at her seriously.

 

“I am going home,” said Carola. “Will you come with me, Monsieur? I have

a garden I should like to show you.”

 

He bowed in acceptance, still silent. Her lackey dismounted from behind

and opened the coach door; Luc stepped into the interior, which was

lined with white satin and full of a keen perfume,

 

He took the seat opposite the Countess; she occupied the whole of hers

with her full skirts, which were of gold brocade of an unusual Eastern

pattern, and the long clinging folds of the crimson “capuchin.”

 

Her dark face looked the darker for the powdered hair; the cheeks were

still hollow, but all her outline was curved and soft, and her lips were

a warm, pale red; her rather sombre eyes were clear and reflective in

expression. She wore diamond ear-rings of remarkable size and

brilliance, and all her garments and the appointments of her coach

showed of noticeable richness. Luc reflected how unaware of her wealth

and position he had been when they were climbing the Bohemian rocks

together.

 

“I thought you would come to Paris,” she remarked. “Do you wish to

enter politics? You should be at Versailles.”

 

“Why, perhaps, Madame,” assented Luc. “But Paris is very interesting to

one who knows so little of the cities of the world as myself.”

 

She gave him a full look.

 

“Oh,” she said slowly; then she added, “But you must meet people, know

people, court people—and every one worth meeting, knowing, courting is

at Versailles. Shall I help you?”

 

“I should be deeply grateful,” answered the Marquis simply. “I have no

acquaintances at the Court.”

 

Carola did not answer; she was gazing out of the window. He had already,

in Bohemia, guessed her to be a woman of few words, and this impression

was confirmed, for the only opening for conversation they had—the

campaign of last year—she never mentioned.

 

The coach drove soon through the massive gates of an hotel that Luc took

to be the residence of her brother-in-law, and the Marquis handed her

out at the steps of the fine door; it was not the house that had been

pointed out to him as the Hôtel Dubussy. As he alighted he noticed a

light curricle pass along the street driven by a lady ostentatiously

placed high and alone on the box with a black servant behind. Her dress

was pale and showy; veils and ribbons flew behind her. The passers-by

stared, and so did Luc, for he recognized in her fair, slightly

over-opulent beauty the woman whom he had seen last night in the house

opposite.

 

“Who is that lady?” he asked, for the Countess was looking at her very

keenly.

 

Carola again gave him her full, almost blank glance.

 

“I do not know,” she answered, rather strangely, he thought, then added,

all in a breath, “Do not let us go into the house; I want to show you

the garden.”

 

She led the way to a door at the side of the mansion—a tall door with a

ring-shaped handle—and, opening it, beckoned the Marquis to follow her.

They went down a narrow stone passage with a wall one side and the house

the other; then the opening of another gate admitted them into the

garden.

 

Luc had been prepared for splendour of statuary, walk, arbour, and

fountain, after the designs of Lenôtre, or perhaps some Eastern fantasy

of trellises and hanging creepers. What he saw, as Carola Koklinska

motioned him to pass her, was utterly different.

 

He found himself in a large garden bounded by high walls on all sides

save one, where the sombre, dark pile of the mansion overshadowed it; a

narrow, neglected gravel path ran round under the walls, from which it

was only separated by an unkempt edging of long grass and thick-leaved

weeds. At the extreme end of the garden, which was of considerable

length, was a row of seven very tall poplar trees which caught the last

rays of sunlight in their topmost branches. For the rest the garden was

a mere stretch of fresh May-time grass neglected and growing tall enough

to bend in a sad fashion before the slight evening breeze.

 

Near the poplars was a plain wooden seat, and behind this showed the

sole flowers in the garden—a clump of wallflowers growing out of, and

on, the high brick wall.

 

Luc noticed the poplars first, for their great height and straightness

reminded him of the silver firs in Bohemia, then the flowers, their

sturdy charm and the bold lustre of their colouring.

 

“Do you like this place, Monsieur?” asked Carola, as she closed the door

behind her.

 

“It reminds me of a convent or a prison, Madame,” he answered; “but it

is doubtless a fair place for meditation.”

 

They were walking slowly down the gravel path, towards the

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