‘You relieve me!’

‘Evidently you have forgotten my character, Nevil.’

‘Not a feature of it.’

‘Ah!’ she breathed involuntarily.

‘Would you have me forget it?’

’When I think by myself, quite alone, yes, I would.  Otherwise how can one hope that one’s friend is friendship, supposing him to read us as we are—­minutely, accurately?  And it is in absence that we desire our friends to be friendship itself.  And . . . and I am utterly astray!  I have not dealt in this language since I last thought of writing a diary, and stared at the first line.  If I mistake not, you are fond of the picturesque.  If moonlight and water will satisfy you, look yonder.’

The moon launched her fairy silver fleets on a double sweep of the little river round an island of reeds and two tall poplars.

‘I have wondered whether I should ever see you looking at that scene,’ said Renee.

He looked from it to her, and asked if Roland was well, and her father; then alluded to her husband; but the unlettering elusive moon, bright only in the extension of her beams, would not tell him what story this face, once heaven to him, wore imprinted on it.  Her smile upon a parted mouth struck him as two-edged in replying:  ’I have good news to give you of them all:  Roland is in garrison at Rouen, and will come when I telegraph.  My father is in Touraine, and greets you affectionately; he hopes to come.  They are both perfectly happy.  My husband is travelling.’

Beauchamp was conscious of some bitter taste; unaware of what it was, though it led him to say, undesigningly:  ’How very handsome that M. d’Henriel is!—­if I have his name correctly.’

Renee answered:  ’He has the misfortune to be considered the handsomest young man in France.’

‘He has an Italian look.’

‘His mother was Provencale.’

She put her horse in motion, saying:  ’I agree with you that handsome men are rarities.  And, by the way, they do not set our world on fire quite as much as beautiful women do yours, my friend.  Acknowledge so much in our favour.’

He assented indefinitely.  He could have wished himself away canvassing in Bevisham.  He had only to imagine himself away from her, to feel the flood of joy in being with her.

‘Your husband is travelling?’

‘It is his pleasure.’

Could she have intended to say that this was good news to give of him as well as of the happiness of her father and brother?

‘Now look on Tourdestelle,’ said Renee.  ’You will avow that for an active man to be condemned to seek repose in so dull a place, after the fatigues of the season in Paris, it is considerably worse than for women, so I am here to dispense the hospitalities.  The right wing of the chateau, on your left, is new.  The side abutting the river is inhabited by Dame Philiberte, whom her husband imprisoned for attempting to take her pleasure in