ommonplace, of human existence.

How wonderful love was, she thought! How wonderful that so many millions
who had loved had come and gone, and yet of all they felt they had
spoken no word that laid bare the exact feeling to her or to any other.
The barbarians who raised these very stones she sat on, they had loved
and hated, and everything they had dared or suffered was recorded--but
where? And who could know exactly what they felt?

She realised the almost keenest pain of life, that universal agony, the
trying to speak, to reveal; and the proof, the hourly proof even the
wisest and most gifted have, that what they feel they can never quite
express, by sound, or by colour, or by the graven stone, or by the
spoken word.... But life was good, ah yes! and all that might be
revealed to her she would pray for; and Philip--her Philip--would help
her to the revelation.

Her Philip! Her heart gave a great throb, for the knowledge that she was
a wife came home to her with a pleasant shock. Her name was no longer
Guida Landresse de Landresse, but Guida d'Avranche. She had gone from
one tribe to another, she had been adopted, changed. A new life was
begun.

She rose, slowly made her way down to the sea, and proceeded along the
sands and shore-paths to the town. Presently a large vessel, with new
sails, beautiful white hull, and gracious form, came slowly round a
point. She shaded her eyes to look at it.

"Why, it's the boat Maitre Ranulph was to launch to-day," she said. Then
she stopped suddenly. "Poor Ranulph--poor Ro!" she added gently. She
knew that he cared for her--loved her. Where had he been these weeks
past? She had not seen him once since that great day when they had
visited the Ecrehos.

CHAPTER XV

The house of Elie Mattingley the smuggler stood in the Rue d'Egypte, not
far east of the Vier Prison. It had belonged to a jurat of repute, who
parted with it to Mattingley not long before he died. There was no doubt
as to the validity of the transfer, for the deed was duly registered
au greffe, and it said: "In consideration of one livre turnois,"
etc. Possibly it was a libel against the departed jurat that he and
Mattingley had had dealings unrecognised by customs law, crystallising
at last into this legacy to the famous pirate-smuggler.

Unlike any other in the street, this house had a high stone wall in
front, enclosing a small square paved with flat stones. In one corner
was an ivy-covered well, with an