t day to this. She had arrived at night, attended by her two German
ladies-in-waiting. A carriage had met her at the railway station in
Bayonne, and set her down at the doors of her Chateau, where her aunt,
old Mademoiselle Henriette, awaited her. What manner of life she led
there, nobody had the poorest means of discovering. Her own servants
(tongue-tied by fear or love) could not be got to speak; and from the
eyes of all outsiders she was sedulously screened. Paul could imagine
her, in her great humiliation, solitary among the ruins of her high
destiny, hiding her wounds; too sensitive to face the curiosity, too
proud to brook the pity, of the world. She seemed to him a very
grandiose and tragic figure, and he lost himself musing of her--her
with whom he had played at being married, when they were children
here, so long, so long ago. She was the daughter, the only child and
heiress, of the last Duc de la Granjolaye de Ravanches,--the same
nobleman of whom it was told that when Louis Napoleon, meaning to be
gracious, said to him, 'You bear a great name, Monsieur,' he had
answered sweetly, 'The greatest of all, I think.' It is certain he was
the head of one of the most illustrious houses in the noblesse of
Europe, descended directly and legitimately, through the Bourbons,
from Saint Louis of France; and, to boot, he was immensely rich,
owning (it was said) half the iron mines in the north of Spain, as
well as a great part of the city of Bayonne. Paul's grandmother, the
Comtesse de Louvance, was his next neighbour. Paul remembered him
vaguely as a tall, drab, mild-mannered man, with a receding chin, and
a soft, rather piping voice, who used to tip him, and have him over a
good deal to stay at Granjolaye.

On the death of Madame de Louvance, the property of Saint-Graal had
passed to her son, Edmond,--Andre's _feu_ Monsieur le Comte. Edmond
rarely lived there, and never asked his sister or her boy there;
whence, twenty years ago, at the respective ages of thirteen and
eleven, Paul and Helene had vanished from each other's ken. But Edmond
never married, either; and when, last winter, he died, he left a will
making Paul his heir. Of Helene's later history Paul knew as much as
all the world knows, and no more--so much, that is, as one could
gather from newspapers and public rumour. He knew of her father's
death, whereby she had become absolute mistress of his enormous
fortune. He knew of her princely marriage, and of her elev