but it is hot!" cried the German, casting down
his foil. "You are doing better. Let us go and cool off in the river.
Come."

They went down the garden, picking the ripe plums as they went. "What
is wrong with you, Rene? You promised me."

"It is the heat. Miss Margaret looks ill. No one could endure it, and in
the counting-house it is dreadful, and with no work to distract me."

"The Pearl goes again to Gray Court to-morrow," said the German.

"Indeed."

"Yes. I shall miss her, but it is as well. And, you, Rene--it is not the
heat. Why do you put me off with such excuses?"

"Well, no. It is of course that villain," and he told of Girard and the
invitation.

"Rene, a day will come when you will meet that man, and then the thing
will somehow end. You cannot go on suffering as you are doing."

"I know; but a devil of indecision pursues me."

"An angel, perhaps."

"Oh, yes. Pity me. My mother stands like a wall I may not pass between
me and him. It is horrible to think that she--she is protecting my
father's murderer. If I told her, by Heaven! she would bid me go and
kill him. You do not know her. She would do it; but, then, who knows
what might chance? If I die, she is alone, friendless. I fear to risk
it. _Mon Dieu_, sir, I am afraid!"

"And yet some day you will have to put an end to all this doubt. Comfort
yourself with this: Fate, which plays with us will take you in hand. Let
it go just now."

"I will try to. I will. If I were as these good Quakers--ah, me, I
should sit down,"--and he smiled,--"and thee and thou Providence, and
be quiet in the armor of meek unresistance."

"They do kill flies," said the German.

"Ah, I wish then they would attend to the mosquitos," cried De Courval,
laughing.

"As to non-resistance, friend, it hath its limitations. Did I tell thee
of Daniel Offley? My Pearl told me," and he related the defeat of the
blacksmith.

"Insolent," said Rene.

"No; the man believed that he had a mission. I should like to have his
conscience for a week or two, to see how it feels; and, as for
non-resistance, canst thou keep a secret?"

"I? Why not? What is it?" He was curious. As they talked, standing
beside the river, Rene watched the flat stones he threw ricochet on the
water.

"Once on a time, as they say in Madame Swanwick's book of sixty-five
tales, by Nancy Skyrin, a man, one Schmidt, came into the dining-room
and sat down quietly to read at an open window for the sake of the
b