r her husband she had divorced in
America, and her father was an English clergyman, old and infirm,
seldom travelling beyond the parish where he lives in a chateau and
reigns as a king. It seems that these things happen in England.
At first he was only a younger son, and dwelt in the rectory as a
plain parish priest, and there he married and brought up his family;
but his elder brother dying, he became seigneur of the parish too,
and moved into a great house, yet with little money to support it
until his only daughter came back from studying at Milan and
conquered London. The old gentleman speaks very modestly about it.
Oh, yes, I have seen and talked with him. And what a garden!
The azaleas! the rhododendrons! But he is old, and his senses
somewhat blunted. He lives in the past--not his own, but his
family's rather. He spoke to me of his daughter without emotion, and
said that her voice was undoubtedly derived from three generations
back, when an ancestor--a baronet--had married with an opera-singer.

"But we were talking of the necklaces and of the ring which Lucien
had taken. . . . He told his secret to nobody, but kept them ever in
his trousers' pocket. Only, when he could escape away from his
comrades to some corner of the shore, he would draw the gems forth
and feast his eyes on them. I believe it weighed on him very little
that he had committed a crime or a sin. Longshore folk have great
ease of conscience respecting all property cast up to them by the
sea. They regard all such as their rightful harvest: the feeling is
in their blood, and I have many times argued in vain against it.
Once while I argued, here in Ile Lezan, an old man asked me, 'But,
Father, if it were not for such chances, why should any man choose to
dwell by the sea?' If, monsieur, you lived among them and knew their
hardships, you would see some rude sense in that question.

"To Lucien, feasting his eyes by stealth on the diamonds and counting
the days to his relief, the stones meant that Jeanne and happiness
were now close within his grasp. There would be difficulty, to be
sure, in disposing of them; but with Jeanne's advice--she had a
practical mind--and perhaps with Jeanne's help, the way would not be
hard to find. He was inclined to plume himself on the ease with
which, so far, it had been managed. His leaving the rings, and the
gems sewn within the camisole--though to be sure these were not
discovered for many hours--had bee