travel.  I hear upon authority that she dresses in white, and wears a black crucifix.  She is many centuries old, and still she lives to remind people that she married a Rouaillout.  Do you not think she should have come to me to welcome me?  She never has; and possibly of ladies who are disembodied we may say that they know best.  For me, I desire the interview—­and I am a coward:  I need not state it.’  She ceased; presently continuing:  ’The other inhabitants are my sister, Agnes d’Auffray, wife of a general officer serving in Afric—­my sister by marriage, and my friend; the baronne d’Orbec, a relation by marriage; M. d’Orbec, her son, a guest, and a sportsman; M. Livret, an erudite.  No young ladies:  I can bear much, but not their presence; girls are odious to me.  I knew one in Venice.’

They came within the rays of the lamp hanging above the unpretending entrance to the chateau.  Renee’s broad grey Longueville hat curved low with its black plume on the side farthest from him.  He was favoured by the gallant lift of the brim on the near side, but she had overshadowed her eyes.

‘He wears a glove at his breast,’ said Beauchamp.

’You speak of M. d’Henriel.  He wears a glove at his breast; yes, it is mine,’ said Renee.

She slipped from her horse and stood against his shoulder, as if waiting to be questioned before she rang the bell of the chateau.

Beauchamp alighted, burning with his unutterable questions concerning that glove.

‘Lift your hat, let me beg you; let me see you,’ he said.

This was not what she had expected.  With one heave of her bosom, and murmuring:  ‘I made a vow I would obey you absolutely if you came,’ she raised the hat above her brows, and lightning would not have surprised him more; for there had not been a single vibration of her voice to tell him of tears running:  nay, the absence of the usual French formalities in her manner of addressing him, had seemed to him to indicate her intention to put him at once on an easy friendly footing, such as would be natural to her, and not painful to him.  Now she said: 

’You perceive, monsieur, that I have my sentimental fits like others; but in truth I am not insensible to the picturesque or to gratitude, and I thank you sincerely for coming, considering that I wrote like a Sphinx—­to evade writing comme une folle!’

She swept to the bell.

Standing in the arch of the entrance, she stretched her whip out to a black mass of prostrate timber, saying: 

‘It fell in the storm at two o’clock after midnight, and you on the sea!’

CHAPTER XXIV

HIS HOLIDAY