“It is nothing,” she said, in a low voice, and after a moment she looked up for the swiftest possible glance and down again.  “That is my—­aunt,” she said.  “Only—­please let us talk about something else!  Of course you couldn’t possibly have known.”

“No,” said Ste. Marie, gravely.  “No, of course.  You are very good to forgive me.”

He was silent a little while, for what the girl had told him surprised him very much indeed, and touched him, too.  He remembered again the remark of his friend when O’Hara had passed them on the boulevard: 

“There goes some of the best blood that ever came out of Ireland.  See what it has fallen to!”

“It is a curious fact,” said he, “that you and I are very close compatriots in the matter of blood—­if ‘compatriots’ is the word.  You are Irish and Spanish.  My mother was Irish and my people were Bearnais, which is about as much Spanish as French; and, indeed, there was a great deal of blood from across the mountains in them, for they often married Spanish wives.”

He pulled the Bayard out of his pocket.

“The Ste. Marie in here married a Spanish lady, didn’t he?”

The girl looked up to him once more.

“Yes,” she said.  “Yes, I remember.  He was a brave man, Monsieur.  He had a great soul.  And he died nobly.”

“Well, as for that,” he said, flushing a little, “the Ste. Maries have all died rather well.”

He gave a short laugh.

“Though I must admit,” said he, “that the last of them came precious near falling below the family standard a week ago.  I should think that probably none of my respected forefathers was killed in climbing over a garden-wall.  Autres temps, autres moeurs.”

He burst out laughing again at what seemed to him rather comic, but Mlle. O’Hara did not smile.  She looked very gravely into his eyes, and there seemed to be something like sorrow in her look.  Ste. Marie wondered at it, but after a moment it occurred to him that he was very near forbidden ground, and that doubtless the girl was trying to give him a silent warning of it.  He began to turn over the leaves of the book in his hand.

“You have marked a great many pages here,” said he.

And she said:  “It is my best of all books.  I read in it very often.  I am so thankful for it that there are no words to say how thankful I am—­how glad I am that I have such a world as that to—­take refuge in sometimes when this world is a little too unbearable.  It does for me now what the fairy stories did when I was little.  And to think that it’s true, true!  To think that once there truly were men like that—­sans peur et sans reproche!  It makes life worth while to think that those men lived even if it was long ago.”

Ste. Marie bent his head over the little book, for he could not look at Mlle. O’Hara just then.  It seemed to him well-nigh the most pathetic speech that he had ever heard.  His heart bled for her.  Out of what mean shadows had the girl to turn her weary eyes upward to this sunlight of ancient heroism!