he idea of him being deprived of the only
gratification his big, ascetic, gaunt body ever knew on earth. As I
mounted my mule to go away he murmured coldly: 'God guard you, Senora!'
Senora! What sternness! We were off a little way already when his heart
softened and he shouted after me in a terrible voice: 'The road to Heaven
is repentance!' And then, after a silence, again the great shout
'Repentance!' thundered after me. Was that sternness or simplicity, I
wonder? Or a mere unmeaning superstition, a mechanical thing? If there
lives anybody completely honest in this world, surely it must be my
uncle. And yet--who knows?

"Would you guess what was the next thing I did? Directly I got over the
frontier I wrote from Bayonne asking the old man to send me out my sister
here. I said it was for the service of the King. You see, I had thought
suddenly of that house of mine in which you once spent the night talking
with Mr. Mills and Don Juan Blunt. I thought it would do extremely well
for Carlist officers coming this way on leave or on a mission. In hotels
they might have been molested, but I knew that I could get protection for
my house. Just a word from the ministry in Paris to the Prefect. But I
wanted a woman to manage it for me. And where was I to find a
trustworthy woman? How was I to know one when I saw her? I don't know
how to talk to women. Of course my Rose would have done for me that or
anything else; but what could I have done myself without her? She has
looked after me from the first. It was Henry Allegre who got her for me
eight years ago. I don't know whether he meant it for a kindness but
she's the only human being on whom I can lean. She knows . . . What
doesn't she know about me! She has never failed to do the right thing
for me unasked. I couldn't part with her. And I couldn't think of
anybody else but my sister.

"After all it was somebody belonging to me. But it seemed the wildest
idea. Yet she came at once. Of course I took care to send her some
money. She likes money. As to my uncle there is nothing that he
wouldn't have given up for the service of the King. Rose went to meet
her at the railway station. She told me afterwards that there had been
no need for me to be anxious about her recognizing Mademoiselle Therese.
There was nobody else in the train that could be mistaken for her. I
should think not! She had made for herself a dress of some brown stuff
like a nun's h