a whatever of the bigness of the thing he's doing! It was the
thunderbolt, Rodney--le coup de foudre--and no wonder!"

"I hope you told him so."

"I was very stiff with him. I sent him about his business just like
that." She snapped her fingers. "But I only meant it with reserves. I
let him see how I had been wronged--how cruelly Olivia had misunderstood
me--but I showed him, too, how I could forgive." She tore at her breast
as though to lay bare her heart. "Oh, I impressed him--not all at once
perhaps--but little by little--"

"As he came to know you."

"I wouldn't let him go away. He stayed at the inn in the village two
weeks and more. It's an old chef of mine who keeps it. And I learned all
his secrets. He thought he was throwing dust in my eyes, but he didn't
throw a grain. As if I couldn't see who was in love with who--after all
my experience! Ah, mon bon Rodney, if I'd been fifty years younger! And
yet if I'd been fifty years younger, I shouldn't have judged him at his
worth. He's the type to which you can do justice only when you've a
standard of comparison, n'est-ce pas? It's in putting him beside other
men--the best--even Ashley over there--that you see how big he is."

She tossed her hand in the direction of Ashley and Drusilla, sitting by
the tea-table at the other end of the room. Mrs. Temple had again found
errands of mercy to insure her absence.

"Il est tres bien, cet Ashley," the Marquise continued,
"chic--distinguished--no more like a wooden man than any other
Englishman. Il est tres bien--but what a difference!--two natures--the
one a mountain pool, fierce, deep, hemmed in all round--the other the
great sea. Voila--Ashley et mon Davenant. And he helped me. He gave me
courage to stand up against the Melcourt--to run away from them. Oh yes,
we ran away--almost. I made a pretext for going to Paris--the old
pretext, the dentist. They didn't suspect at my age--how should
they?--or they wouldn't have let me come alone. Helie or Paul or Anne
Marie would have come with me. Oh, they smother me! But we ran away. We
took the train to Cherbourg, just like two eloping lovers--and the
bateau de luxe, the _Louisiana_ to New York. Mais helas!--"

She paused to laugh, and at the same time to dash away a tear. "At New
York we parted, never to meet again--so he thinks. His work was done! He
went straight to that funny place in Michigan to join his pal. He's
there now--waiting to hear that Olivia has married her En