but as that
diplomatist "abode in his breaches" and confined his intercourse with
those around to asking the major-domo once a day what there was for
dinner, his influence on his wife was not great. His trouble was spoken
of, leniently, as "a touch of the sun."

"Our host comes from a rendezvous, doubtless," put in the Countess
Livia, with a bitter intention, glancing, as she did so, at a
fair-haired girl with wide-open eyes who sat listless and very quiet at
the seaward window. A priest, playing chess with a robust,
country-faced man, looked up quickly from his ivory pieces. But the girl
said nothing, and Raphael Llorient was left to answer for himself.

This he did by turning towards her who had not spoken, or even looked in
his direction.

"Mademoiselle Valentine," he said, "will you not defend a poor man who,
having but one vineyard, must needs sometimes trim and graft with his
own hands?"

Momentarily, the girl rested her great eyes, of the greenish amber of
pressed clover honey, full upon him. Her face was faintly flushed like
the blonde of meadow-sweet, but quite without pink in the cheeks. Her
lips, however, were full, red, and more than a little scornful.

"The Lord of Collioure can surely please himself as to his comings and
goings," she said; "for the rest, is not my ghostly uncle here to
confess him, if such be his need?"

"Valentine la Nina," cried the Duchess, "is there nothing in the world
that will make you curious? Only twenty-five, and reputed the fairest
woman in Europe. Yet you have outlived the sin of Eve, your mother! It
is an insult against the laws of your sex. What shall we do to her?"

"Make her confess to her uncle," said the Countess Livia, who also never
could forgive in any woman the offence-capital of beauty.

"My niece Valentine has her own spiritual adviser," said the priest,
looking up from his game, with a smile which had enough of curiosity in
it to make up for his niece's lack of it. "A Pope may, if he will,
confess his nephews, but a poor Brother of the Society had better
confide the cure of his relatives' souls to the nearest village priest.
Otherwise he might be suspect of conspiring against the good of the
state. The regular clergy may steal horses, while a Jesuit may not even
look over the wall!"

The ladies rose to say good-night. Like a careful host, Raphael took
from the table a tall candelabra of two branches, in order to conduct
them severally to the doors of th