res steadily deteriorated, his affairs became involved,
and a shrewd observer like Lord Findon wondered who or what the deuce
had got hold of him--whether he had begun to take morphia--or had
fallen into the clutches of a woman.

In the midst of these developments, so astonishing and disappointing
to Fenwick's best friends, Eugenie de Pastourelles was suddenly
summoned to the death-bed of the husband from whom she had been
separated for nearly fifteen years. It was now nearly twelve months
since Fenwick had seen her; and it was his eagerness to meet her
again, much more than the necessities of his new commission, which
had brought him out post-haste to Paris and Versailles, where, indeed,
Lord Findon, in a kind letter, had suggested that he should join them.

* * * * *

Amid these memories and agitations, he found himself presently at
the Gare Saint-Lazare, taking his ticket at the _guichet_. It was
characteristic of him that he bought a first-class return without
thinking of it, and then, when he found himself pompously alone in
his compartment, while crowds were hurrying into the second-class, he
reproached himself for extravagance, and passed the whole journey in
a fume of discomfort. For eight or nine years he had been rich; and he
loathed the small ways of poverty.

Versailles was in the glow of an autumn sunset, as he walked from the
station to the famous Hotel des Reservoirs on the edge of the Park.
The white houses, the wide avenues, the chateau on its hill, were
steeped in light--a light golden, lavish, and yet melancholy, as
though the autumn day still remembered the October afternoon when
Marie Antoinette turned to look for the last time at the lake and the
woods of Trianon.

As Fenwick crossed the Rue de la Paroisse, a lady on the other side of
the road, who was hurrying in the opposite direction, stopped suddenly
at sight of him, and stared excitedly. She was a woman no longer
young, much sunburnt, with high cheek-bones and a florid complexion.
He did not notice her, and after a moment's hesitation she resumed her
walk.

He went into the Park, where the statues shone flamelike amid the
bronze and orange of the trees, where the water of the fountains was
dyed in blue and rose, and all the faded magnificence and decaying
grace of the vast incomparable scene were kindling into an hour's rich
life, under the last attack of the sun. He wandered a while, restless
and unhappy