There is
coming an hour in which he may return home, and he is forever looking
forward, counting the days. The present must be lived, but reality lies
in the future.

The Marquise de Rovere, brilliant, witty, proud as any woman in France,
daughter of ancestors famous during the time of the fourteenth and
fifteenth Louis, had in the long past a forbear who was lord of this
chateau of Beauvais. Since then there had been other lords with whom she
had nothing to do, but her grandfather having grown rich,
unscrupulously, it was said, bought Beauvais, restored it, added to it
and tried to forget that it had ever passed out of the hands of his
ancestors. In due time his granddaughter inherited it, and after that
terrible day at Versailles when the mob had stormed the palace, when
many of the nobility foresaw disaster and made haste to flee from it
into voluntary exile, what better place could the Marquise choose than
this chateau of Beauvais? Hither she had come with her niece Jeanne St.
Clair, and others had followed. In Paris the Marquise had been the
center of a brilliant coterie, she would still be a center in Beauvais
and the chateau should be open to every emigre of distinction.

So it came to pass that sleepy Beauvais had suddenly stretched itself
and aroused from slumber. The Marquise was rich, her niece a wealthy
heiress, much of both their fortunes not dependent upon French finance,
and a golden harvest fell upon the simple mountaineers and cattle
tenders. Every available room was at the disposal of master or lackey,
and the sleepy square was alive with men and women who had intrigued and
danced at Versailles, who had played pastoral games with Marie
Antoinette at the Trianon, whose names were famous. Idlers were many in
Beauvais, exiles awaiting the hour for return, for revenge upon the
rabble, yet doing nothing to forward the hour; but there were many
others, men who came and went full of news and endeavor. Beauvais was a
meeting place. There one might hear the latest rumors from Paris, learn
what help might be expected from Austria, from Prussia; and while news
was gathered and given there was brilliant entertainment at the chateau.

"We may make even exile bearable," the Marquise had said, and she did
her utmost to do so.

It was into this wideawake village of Beauvais that Richard Barrington
and Seth, weary and travel-stained, rode late one afternoon, and came to
a halt before the inn. They passed almost unn