Mutely he gazed after them.  For a long time he stood staring beyond the rocks, marveling at the strangeness of this thing that had happened.  An hour before he had stood with bared head over the ancient dead at Churchill, and now, on the rock, he had seen the resurrection of what he had dreamed those dead to be in life.  He had never seen people like Pierre and Jeanne.  Their strange dress, the rapier at Pierre’s side, his courtly bow, the low, graceful courtesy that the girl had made him, all carried him back to the days of the old pictures that hung in the factor’s room at Churchill, when high-blooded gallants came into the wilderness with their swords at their sides, wearing the favors of court ladies next their hearts.  Pierre, standing there on the rock, with his hand on his rapier, might have been Grosellier himself, the prince’s favorite, and Jeanne—­

Something white on the rock near where the girl had been sitting caught Philip’s eyes.  In a moment he held in his fingers a small handkerchief and a broad ribbon of finely knit lace.  In her haste to get away she had forgotten these things.  He was about to run to the crest of the cliff and call loudly for Pierre Couchee when he held the handkerchief and the lace close to his face and the delicate perfume of heliotrope stopped him.  There was something familiar about it, something that held him wondering and mystified, until he knew that he had lost the opportunity to recall Pierre and his companion.  He looked at the handkerchief more, closely.  It was a dainty fabric, so soft that it gave barely the sensation of touch when he crushed it in the palm of his hand.  For a few moments he was puzzled to account for the filmy strip of lace.  Then the truth came to him.  Jeanne had used it to bind her hair!

He laughed softly, joyously, as he wound the bit of fabric about his fingers and retraced his steps toward Churchill.  Again and again he pressed the tiny handkerchief to his face, breathing of its sweetness; and the action suddenly stirred his memory to the solution of its mystery.  It was this same sweetness that had come to him on the night that he had looked down into the beautiful face of Eileen Brokaw at the Brokaw ball.  He remembered now that Eileen Brokaw loved heliotrope, and that she always wore a purple heliotrope at her white throat or in the gold of her hair.  For a moment it struck him as singular that so many things had happened this day to remind him of Brokaw’s daughter.  The thought hastened his steps.  He was anxious to look at the picture again, to convince himself that he had been mistaken.  Gregson was asleep when he re-entered the cabin.  The light was burning low, and Philip turned up the wick.  On the table was the picture as Gregson had left it.  This time there was no doubt.  He had drawn the face of Eileen Brokaw.  In a spirit of jest he had written under it, “The Wife of Lord Fitzhugh.”