[Illustration:  We walked until sunset in the park, by lake, and bridged stream, and hollied path.]

I can yet see the child looking over Ernestine’s shoulder.  She carried him up stairs of oak worn hollow like stone, a mighty hand-wrought balustrade rising with them from hall to roof.

We had our supper in a paneled room where the lights were reflected as on mirrors of polished oak, and the man who served us had served Madame de Ferrier’s father and grandfather.  The gentle old provincial went about his duty as a religious rite.

There was a pleached walk like that in the marquis’ Paris garden, of branches flattened and plaited to form an arbor supported by tree columns; which led to a summer-house of stone smothered in ivy.  We walked back and forth under this thick roof of verdure.  Eagle’s cap of brown hair was roughened over her radiant face, and the open throat of her gown showed pulses beating in her neck.  Her lifted chin almost touched my arm as I told her all the Mittau story, at her request.

“Poor Madame d’Angouleme!  The cautious priest and the king should not have taken you from me like that!  She knew you as I knew you; and a woman’s knowing is better than a man’s proofs.  She will have times of doubting their policy.  She will remember the expression of your mouth, your shrugs, and gestures—­the little traits of the child Louis, that reappear in the man.”

“I wish I had never gone to Mittau to give her a moment’s distress.”

“Is she very beautiful?”

“She is like a lily made flesh.  She has her strong dislikes, and one of them is Louis Philippe—­”

“Naturally,” said Eagle.

“But she seemed sacred to me.  Perhaps a woman brings that hallowedness out of martyrdom.”

“God be with the royal lady!  And you, sire!”

“And you!—­may you be always with me, Eagle!”

“This journey to Mittau changes nothing.  You were wilful.  You would go to the island in Lake George:  you would go to Mittau.”

“Both times you sent me.”

“Both times I brought you home!  Let us not be sorrowful to-night.”

“Sorrowful!  I am so happy it seems impossible that I come from Mittau, and this day the Marquis du Plessy died to me!  I wish the sun had been tied to the trees, as the goose girl tied her gander.”

“But I want another day,” said Eagle.  “I want all the days that are my due at home.”

We ascended the steps of the stone pavilion, and sat down in an arch like a balcony over the sunken garden.  Pears and apricots, their branches flattened against the wall, showed ruddy garnered sunlight through the dusk.  The tangled enclosure sloped down to the stream, from which a fairy wisp of mist wavered over flower bed and tree.  Dew and herbs and the fragrance of late roses sent up a divine breath, invisibly submerging us, like a tide rising out of the night.

Madame de Ferrier’s individual traits were surprised in this nearness, as they never had been when I saw her at a distance in alien surroundings.  A swift ripple, involuntary and glad, coursed down her body; she shuddered for joy half a minute or so.