young ladies: I can
bear much, but not their presence; girls are odious to me. I knew one in
Venice.'

They came within the rays of the lamp hanging above the unpretending
entrance to the chateau. Renee's broad grey Longueville hat curved low
with its black plume on the side farthest from him. He was favoured by
the gallant lift of the brim on the near side, but she had overshadowed
her eyes.

'He wears a glove at his breast,' said Beauchamp.

'You speak of M. d'Henriel. He wears a glove at his breast; yes, it is
mine,' said Renee.

She slipped from her horse and stood against his shoulder, as if waiting
to be questioned before she rang the bell of the chateau.

Beauchamp alighted, burning with his unutterable questions concerning
that glove.

'Lift your hat, let me beg you; let me see you,' he said.

This was not what she had expected. With one heave of her bosom, and
murmuring: 'I made a vow I would obey you absolutely if you came,' she
raised the hat above her brows, and lightning would not have surprised
him more; for there had not been a single vibration of her voice to tell
him of tears running: nay, the absence of the usual French formalities in
her manner of addressing him, had seemed to him to indicate her intention
to put him at once on an easy friendly footing, such as would be natural
to her, and not painful to him. Now she said:

'You perceive, monsieur, that I have my sentimental fits like others; but
in truth I am not insensible to the picturesque or to gratitude, and I
thank you sincerely for coming, considering that I wrote like a
Sphinx--to evade writing comme une folle!'

She swept to the bell.

Standing in the arch of the entrance, she stretched her whip out to a
black mass of prostrate timber, saying:

'It fell in the storm at two o'clock after midnight, and you on the sea!'

CHAPTER XXIV

HIS HOLIDAY

A single day was to be the term of his holiday at Tourdestelle; but it
stood forth as one of those perfect days which are rounded by an evening
before and a morning after, giving him two nights under the same roof
with Renee, something of a resemblance to three days of her; anticipation
and wonder filling the first, she the next, the adieu the last: every
hour filled. And the first day was not over yet. He forced himself to
calmness, that he might not fritter it, and walked up and down the room
he was dressing in, examining its foreign decorations, and peering
through the win