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But the Peruccas are in danger of falling into dissension and disorder, for they have no head. You are the head, mademoiselle. And the work they expect of you is not work for such hands as yours." And again Colonel Gilbert looked at Denise slowly and thoughtfully. She did not perceive the glance, for she was standing with her head half turned towards the trees.
Down in the garden there is a glimpse of a white gown, and now he need pause for no propriety. Violet starts at the step, turns, and colors, but stands quite still. Denise has been giving her some instructions as to her new position and its duties, but has only succeeded in confusing her, in taking away her friend with whom she felt at ease, and giving her a tie that alarms and perplexes.
"He has joined his regiment," replied Mademoiselle Brun, upon whom the burden of the conversation fell; for Denise had gone to the open window, and was closing the shutters against the sun. "Ah! Then I can tell you that he was not at Saarbrueck. The count's regiment is not in that part of the country. I was forgetting that he was a soldier. He is, by the way, your nearest neighbour."
Soon the road mounts above the level of the semi-tropical vegetation, and passes along the face of bare and stony heights, where the pines are small and the macquis no higher than a man's head. Denise, tired with so long a drive at a snail's pace, jumped from the carriage. "I will walk up this hill," she cried to the driver, who had never turned in his seat or spoken a word to them.
The room did not lend itself to description, for it had bare walls and two long windows looking down disconsolately upon a courtyard, where a grey cat sunned herself in the daytime and bewailed her lot at night. Who, indeed, would be a convent cat? At the far end of the long room Mademoiselle Denise Lange was superintending, with an earnest face, the studies of five young ladies.
Denise, the cameriera, noticed the light in the room, entered, and after vainly endeavoring to rouse Henrica, called her mistress. The latter followed the maid, muttering as she ascended the stairs: "Fallen asleep, found the time hang heavy that's all! She might have been lively and laughed with us! Stupid race! 'Men of butter, King Philip says.
The letter, which was accompanied by an enclosure, was from a Marseilles solicitor, and began by inquiring as to the identity of Mademoiselle Denise Lange, instructress at the convent school in the Rue du Cherche-Midi, with the daughter of the late General Lange, who met his death on the field of Solferino.
And how strange that Cecil should evince such an unwonted partiality for Miss St. Vincent! Does it all point one way to a certain ending? It is well that Floyd Grandon has taken this path. He goes up through the garden and hears a voice at the hall door. "You cannot see him," Denise is saying. "He is scarcely conscious, and cannot be disturbed. Your call of yesterday made him much worse."
He had loved Denise, but there had been in his affection for her more of compassion than passion, as Denise herself had known. She remained in his memory like a perfume. That had been his one serious liaison. But the woman he could really love with his fullest powers, and to whom he could give his best, had not yet appeared. Mrs. Hemingway had been troubled by his celibacy.
"But I DO tell you!" said Dr. Cumberly; "I ASSURE you." "And you have not told Mr. Leroux?" said Helen incredulously. "You have NOT told him although you know that the thought of THAT is?"... "Is practically killing him? No, I have not told him yet. For would my news act as a palliative or as an irritant?" "That depends," pronounced Denise Ryland, "on the nature of... your news."
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