“You are unhappy when you are not doing things for others, Madame,” I suggested.

“I am a discontented woman,” she said; “I always have been.  And I am unhappy when I think of all those who were dear to me and whom I loved.  Many are dead, and many are scattered and homeless.”

“I have often thought of your sorrows, Madame,” I said.

“Which reminds me that I should not burden you with them, my good friend, when you are recovering.  Do you know that you have been very near to death?”

“I know, Madame,” I faltered.  “I know that had it not been for you I should not be alive to-day.  I know that you risked your life to save my own.”

She did not answer at once, and when I looked at her she was gazing out over the flowers on the lawn.

“My life did not matter,” she said.  “Let us not talk of that.”

I might have answered, but I dared not speak for fear of saying what was in my heart.  And while I trembled with the repression of it, she was changed.  She turned her face towards me and smiled a little.

“If you had obeyed me you would not have been so ill,” she said.

“Then I am glad that I did not obey you.”

“Your cousin, the irrepressible Mr. Temple, says I am a tyrant.  Come now, do you think me a tyrant?”

“He has also said other things of you.”

“What other things?”

I blushed at my own boldness.

“He said that if he were not in love with Antoinette, he would be in love with you.”

“A very safe compliment,” said the Vicomtesse.  “Indeed, it sounds too cautious for Mr. Temple.  You must have tampered with it, Mr. Ritchie,” she flashed.  “Mr. Temple is a boy.  He needs discipline.  He will have too easy a time with Antoinette.”

“He is not the sort of man you should marry,” I said, and sat amazed at it.

She looked at me strangely.

“No, he is not,” she answered.  “He is more or less the sort of man I have been thrown with all my life.  They toil not, neither do they spin.  I know you will not misunderstand me, for I am very fond of him.  Mr. Temple is honest, fearless, lovable, and of good instincts.  One cannot say as much for the rest of his type.  They go through life fighting, gaming, horse-racing, riding to hounds,—­I have often thought that it was no wonder our privileges came to an end.  So many of us were steeped in selfishness and vice, were a burden on the world.  The early nobles, with all their crimes, were men who carved their way.  Of such were the lords of the Marches.  We toyed with politics, with simplicity, we wasted the land, we played cards as our coaches passed through famine-stricken villages.  The reckoning came.  Our punishment was not given into the hands of the bourgeois, who would have dealt justly, but to the scum, the canaille, the demons of the earth.  Had our King, had our nobility, been men with the old fire, they would not have stood it.  They were worn out with centuries of catering to themselves.  Give me a man who will shape his life and live it with all his strength.  I am tired of sham and pretence, of cynical wit, of mocking at the real things of life, of pride, vain-glory, and hypocrisy.  Give me a man whose existence means something.”