“Not many wise, not many mighty, not many noble are called,” said the Doctor; “yet if it would please the Lord to employ my instrumentality and prayers, how much should I rejoice!  I was struck,” he added, “to-night, when I saw those Jews present, with the thought that it was, as it were, a type of that last ingathering, when both Jew and Gentile shall sit down lovingly together to the gospel feast.  It is only by passing over and forgetting these present years, when so few are called and the gospel makes such slow progress, and looking unto that glorious time, that I find comfort.  If the Lord but use me as a dumb stepping-stone to that heavenly Jerusalem, I shall be content.”

Thus they talked while the wagon jogged soberly homeward, and the frogs and the turtles and the distant ripple of the sea made a drowsy, mingling concert in the summer-evening air.

Meanwhile Colonel Burr had returned to the lighted rooms, and it was not long before his quick eye espied Madame de Frontignac standing pensively in a window-recess, half hid by the curtain.  He stole softly up behind her and whispered something in her ear.

In a moment she turned on him a face glowing—­with anger, and drew back haughtily; but Burr remarked the glitter of tears, not quite dried even by the angry flush of her eyes.

“In what have I had the misfortune to offend?” he said, crossing his arms upon his breast.  “I stand at the bar, and plead, Not guilty.”

He spoke in French, and she replied in the same smooth accents,—­

“It was not for her to dispute Monsieur’s right to amuse himself.”

Burr drew nearer, and spoke in those persuasive, pleading tones which he had ever at command, and in that language whose very structure in its delicate tutoiment gives such opportunity for gliding on through shade after shade of intimacy and tenderness, till gradually the haughty fire of the eyes was quenched in tears, and, in the sudden revulsion of a strong, impulsive nature, she said what she called words of friendship, but which carried with them all the warmth of that sacred fire which is given to woman to light and warm the temple of home, and which sears and scars when kindled for any other shrine.

And yet this woman was the wife of his friend and associate!

Colonel de Frontignac was a grave and dignified man of forty-five.  Virginie de Frontignac had been given him to wife when but eighteen,—­a beautiful, generous, impulsive, wilful girl.  She had accepted him gladly, for very substantial reasons.  First, that she might come out of the convent where she was kept for the very purpose of educating her in ignorance of the world she was to live in.  Second, that she might wear velvet, lace, cashmere, and jewels.  Third, that she might be a Madame, free to go and come, ride, walk, and talk, without surveillance.  Fourth,—­and consequent upon this,—­that she might go into company and have admirers and adorers.