“I will confess.  I read it in one of papa’s books that is called the Talmud.”

“Gracious me! you should be careful.  What did you read?”

“That whoever wants to see the souls of the dead—­”

“Plancine!”

“—­must take finely sifted ashes, and strew them round his bed; and in the morning he will see their foot-tracks, as a cock’s.  I did it.”

“You did?”

“Last night, yes.  And what a business I had afterwards sweeping them up!”

“And did you see anything?”

“Something—­yes—­I think so.  But it might have been mice.  There are plenty up there.”

“Now you are an odd Plancine!  What did you want with the ghosts of the dead?”

“I will tell you, you tall man; and you will not abuse my confidence.  George, for all your gay independence, you must allow me a little family pride and a little pathetic interest in the fortunes of the dead and gone De Jussacs.”

“It is Mademoiselle De Jussac that speaks.”

“It is Plancine, who knows so little:—­that ‘The Terror’ would have guillotined her father, a boy of fourteen:  that he escaped to Prussia, to Belgium, to England; for six years always a wanderer and a fugitive:  that he was wrecked on this dear coast and, penniless, started life anew here on his little accomplishments:  that he made out a meagre existence, and late in the order of years (he was fifty) married an expatriated countrywoman, who died—­George, my mother died when I was seventeen months old—­and that is where I stop.  My good, big father—­so lonely, so poor, and so silent!  He tells me little.  He speaks scantily of the past.  But he was a Vicomte and is the last of his line; and I wanted the ghosts to explain to me so much that I have never learned.”

The moonlight fell upon her sweet, pale, uplifted face.  There were tears in her eyes that glittered like frost.

But George, for all his love, showed a little masculine impatience.

“Reserve is very good,” he said; “but we can’t all be Lord Burleighs by holding our tongues.  There is a sort of silence that is pregnant with nothing.”

“George, you cannot mean to insult my father?”

“No, dear.  But why does he make such a mystery of his past?  I would have mine as clear as a window, for all to look through.  Why does he treat me with such suave and courteous opposition—­permitting my suit, yet withholding his consent?”

“If you could be less democratic, dear—­”

“It is a religion with me—­not a brutal indulgence.”

“Perhaps he cannot dissociate the two.  Then, he admires your genius and commends your courage; but your poor purse hungers, my lover, and he desires riches for his Plancine.”

“And Plancine?”

“She will die a grey-haired maid for thee, ‘O Richard!  O my king!’”

“My sweet—­my bird—­my wife!  Oh, that you could be that now and kiss me on to fortune!  I should be double-souled and inspired.  A few months, and Madame la Vicomtesse should ‘walk in silk attire.’  I flame at the picture.  Why will your father not yield you gracefully, instead of plying us with that eternal enigma of Black Venn?”