secret stairway which led
into the gardens.

CHAPTER IV

THE GALLANT IN THE GARDEN

Madame de Bergenheim's apartments occupied the first floor of the wing on
the left side of the house. On the ground floor were the library, a
bathroom, and several guest-chambers. The large windows had a modern
look, but they were made to harmonize with the rest of the house by means
of grayish paint. At the foot of this facade was a lawn surrounded by a
wall and orange-trees planted in tubs, forming a sort of English garden,
a sanctuary reserved for the mistress of the castle, and which brought
her, as a morning tribute, the perfume of its flowers and the coolness of
its shade.

Through the tops of the fir-trees and the tuliptrees, which rose above
the group of smaller shrubs, the eye could follow the winding river until
it finally disappeared at the extremity of the valley. It was this
picturesque view and a more extensive horizon which had induced the
Baroness to choose this part of the Gothic manor for her own private
apartments.

After crossing the lawn, the young woman opened a gate concealed by
shrubs and entered the avenue by the banks of the river. This avenue
described a curve around the garden, and led to the principal entrance of
the chateau. Night was approaching, the countryside, which had been
momentarily disturbed by the storm, had resumed its customary serenity.
The leaves of the trees, as often happens after a rain, looked as fresh
as a newly varnished picture. The setting sun cast long shadows through
the trees, and their interlaced branches looked like a forest of
boa-constrictors.

Clemence advanced slowly under this leafy dome, which became darker and
more mysterious every moment, with head bent and enveloped in a large
cashmere shawl which fell in irregular folds to the ground. Madame de
Bergenheim had one of those faces which other women would call not at all
remarkable, but which intelligent men ardently admire. At the first
glance she seemed hardly pretty; at the second, she attracted involuntary
admiration; afterward, it was difficult to keep her out of one's
thoughts. Her features, which taken separately might seem irregular, were
singularly harmonious, and, like a thin veil which tempers a too dazzling
light, softened the whole expression. Her light chestnut hair was
arranged about the temples in ingenious waves; while her still darker
eyebrows gave, at times, an imposing gravity to her face. Th