If Renee had faults, Beauchamp thought of her as at sea breasting tempests, while Cecilia was a vessel lying safe in harbour, untried, however promising:  and if Cecilia raised a steady light for him, it was over the shores he had left behind, while Renee had really nothing to do with warning or rescuing, or with imperilling; she welcomed him simply to a holiday in her society.  He associated Cecilia strangely with the political labours she would have had him relinquish; and Renee with a pleasant state of indolence, that her lightest smile disturbed.  Shun comparisons.

It is the tricksy heart which sets up that balance, to jump into it on one side or the other.  Comparisons come of a secret leaning that is sure to play rogue under its mien of honest dealer:  so Beauchamp suffered himself to be unjust to graver England, and lost the strength she would have given him to resist a bewitchment.  The case with him was, that his apprenticeship was new; he had been trotting in harness as a veritable cab-horse of politics—­he by blood a racer; and his nature craved for diversions, against his will, against his moral sense and born tenacity of spirit.

Not a word further of the glove.  But at night, in his bed, the glove was a principal actor in events of extraordinary magnitude and inconsequence.

He was out in the grounds with the early morning light.  Coffee and sweet French bread were brought out to him, and he was informed of the hours of reunion at the chateau, whose mistress continued invisible.  She might be sleeping.  He strolled about, within view of the windows, wondering at her subservience to sleep.  Tourdestelle lay in one of those Norman valleys where the river is the mother of rich pasture, and runs hidden between double ranks of sallows, aspens and poplars, that mark its winding line in the arms of trenched meadows.  The high land on either side is an unwatered flat up to the horizon, little varied by dusty apple-trees planted in the stubble here and there, and brown mud walls of hamlets; a church-top, a copse, an avenue of dwarf limes leading to the three-parts farm, quarter residence of an enriched peasant striking new roots, or decayed proprietor pinching not to be severed from ancient.  Descending on the deep green valley in Summer is like a change of climes.  The chateau stood square at a branch of the river, tossing three light bridges of pretty woodwork to park and garden.  Great bouquets of swelling blue and pink hydrangia nestled at his feet on shaven grass.  An open window showed a cloth of colour, as in a reminiscence of Italy.

Beauchamp heard himself addressed:—­’You are looking for my sister-in-law, M. Beauchamp?’

The speaker was Madame d’Auffray, to whom he had been introduced overnight—­a lady of the aquiline French outline, not ungentle.

Renee had spoken affectionately of her, he remembered.  There was nothing to make him be on his guard, and he stated that he was looking for Madame de Rouaillout, and did not conceal surprise at the information that she was out on horseback.