t gentle welcome, and asking anxiously how
I stood the journey. Another took my hand, held it for the briefest
space that has been marked out of time, and for that instant I looked
into her eyes. Life flowed back into me, and strength, and a joy not to
be fathomed. I could have walked; but they bore me through the
well-remembered vista, and the white gallery at the end of it was like
the sight of home. The evening air was laden with the scent of the
sweetest of all shrubs and flowers.

CHAPTER XIV

"TO UNPATHED WATERS, UNDREAMED SHORES"

Monsieur and Madame de St. Gre themselves came with me to my chamber off
the gallery, where everything was prepared for my arrival with the most
loving care,--Monsieur de St. Gre supplying many things from his wardrobe
which I lacked. And when I tried to thank them for their kindness he
laid his hand upon my shoulder.

"Tenez, mon ami," he said, "you got your illness by doing things for
other people. It is time other people did something for you."

Lindy brought me the daintiest of suppers, and I was left to my
meditations. Nick looked in at the door, and hinted darkly that I had to
thank a certain tyrant for my abandonment. I called to him, but he paid
no heed, and I heard him chuckling as he retreated along the gallery.
The journey, the excitement into which I had been plunged by the news I
had heard, brought on a languor, and I was between sleeping and waking
half the night. I slept to dream of her, of the Vicomte, her husband,
walking in his park or playing cards amidst a brilliant company in a
great candle-lit room like the drawing-room at Temple Bow. Doubt grew,
and sleep left me. She was free now, indeed, but was she any nearer to
me? Hope grew again,--why had she left me in New Orleans? She had
received a letter, and if she had cared she would not have remained. But
there was a detestable argument to fit that likewise, and in the light of
this argument it was most natural that she should return to Les Iles.
And who was I, David Ritchie, a lawyer of the little town of Louisville,
to aspire to the love of such a creature? Was it likely that Helene,
Vicomtesse d'Ivry-le-Tour, would think twice of me? The powers of the
world were making ready to crush the presumptuous France of the Jacobins,
and the France of King and Aristocracy would be restored. Chateaux and
lands would be hers again, and she would go back again to that brilliant
life among the great to which she was bor