e de Morteyn clung
to her, too, sobbing convulsively; Dorothy hid her face in her
black-edged handkerchief.

After a moment Lorraine stepped back, drying her sweet eyes.
Dorothy kissed her again and again.

"I--I don't see why we should cry," said Lorraine, while the
tears ran down her flushed cheeks. "If he had died it would have
been different."

After a silence she said again:

"You will see. We are not unhappy--Jack and I. Monsieur Grahame
came yesterday with Rickerl, who is doing very well."

"Rickerl here, too?" whispered Dorothy.

Lorraine slipped an arm through hers, looking back at the old
people.

"Come," she said, serenely, "Jack is able to sit up." Then in
Dorothy's ear she whispered, "I dare not tell them--you must."

"Dare not tell them--"

"That--that I married Jack--this morning."

The girls' arms pressed each other.

German officers passed and repassed, rigid, supercilious, staring
at the young girls with that half-sneering, half-impudent,
near-sighted gaze peculiar to the breed. Their insolent eyes,
however, dropped before the clear, mild glance of the old
vicomte.

His face was furrowed by care and grief, but he held his white
head high and stepped with an elasticity that he had not known in
years. Defeat, disaster, sorrow, could not weaken him; he was of
the old stock, the real beau-sabreur, a relic of the old regime,
that grew young in the face of defeat, that died of a broken
heart at the breath of dishonour. There had been no dishonour, as
he understood it--there had been defeat, bitter defeat. That was
part of his trade, to face defeat nobly, courteously, chivalrously;
to bow with a smile on his lips to the more skilful adversary who
had disarmed him.

Bitterness he knew, when the stiff Prussian officers clanked past
along the sidewalk of this French city; despair he never dreamed
of. As for dishonour--that is the cry of the pack, the refuge of
the snarling mob yelping at the bombastic vociferations of some
mean-souled demagogue; and in Paris there were many, and the pack
howled in the Republic at the crack of the lash.

"Lady Hesketh is here, too," said Lorraine. "She appears to be a
little reconciled to her loss. Dorothy, it breaks my heart to see
Rickerl. He lies in his room all day, silent, ghastly white. He
does not believe that Alixe--did what she did--and died there at
Morteyn. Oh, I am glad you are here. Jack says you must tell
Rickerl nothing about Sir Thorald; nobo