acy--what can we
do?"

"Nothing--nothing--nothing."

CHAPTER XXXI

ONE DEFENDER

Cyrene passed down her favourite oleander path at sunset to the great
vinery in the Noailles garden. The oleanders were covered with their
roseate blooms, and their beauty and that of the garden in the soft
sunset light mysteriously deepened with an undefined regret the sadness
and fears which were hers of late.

"Why do you not come to me, Germain? Why have you not at least written
me a few words in reply to mine? Only a few words, my dear one--only the
least line," she murmured to herself.

She passed on to the vinery, where sitting down under the interlaced
green she became still more abstracted.

"Oh Germain, some great danger is above you. Who are those enemies of
whom the Instrument of Vengeance spoke? What is this web of murder and
madness in which they are involving you? I pray God to keep you safe, my
love. Ah, what bliss to have you mine, _mine_, and be yours. At last, at
last we shall have somewhere a sweet _chez nous_ to ourselves."

The loveliness of the oleander blossoms and the sunset over the garden
made a harmony with her dream. To the widow who had been no wife, the
girl who had seen no girlhood, the child who had never had a home, the
lady who was losing her life in gilded servitude, that dream was dear.

The sound of a silver bell broke in, the signal that she was in request
by old Madame l'Etiquette. A sigh escaped her, and she hastened to the
house.

To de Lotbiniere, to have effected his point had not been enough. To
humiliate Lecour with the ladies with whom he had ingratiated himself
was yet, in the opinion of this vindicator of public interests, demanded
by justice to society, so he had wended his way that afternoon to the
Hotel de Noailles and applied at the portal of the Marechale. There he
was kept waiting while his name was sent in.

"The person is not on my list," she said. "Present my regrets." Covering
his irritation with a smiling face, as courtiers must ever learn to do,
he asked for ink and paper and patiently wrote her on the spot a
respectful and pointed warning on the danger to Cyrene. His missive
struck the dominant chord in the breast of Madame.

"What," she cried on reading it "de Lincy a cheat! No questionable
person shall ally himself with the royal blood of the Noailles and
Montmorencys! This is what comes of relaxing the old rules, the old
customs, and admitting new peopl