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It had been so from the first, when he had told her that her father lay dead somewhere in the forest of Morteyn. She had said nothing she went to her room and sat down on the bed, white and still. Sir Thorald lay in the next room, breathing deeply. Alixe was kneeling beside him, crying silently. Twice a surgeon from an infantry regiment had come and gone away after a glance at Sir Thorald.
Suddenly, far ahead, something gray shambled loosely across the path, leaped a brush heap, slunk under a fallen tree, and loped on again. For a moment Marche refused to believe his own eyes. A wolf in Lorraine! a big, gray timber-wolf, here, within a mile of the Château Morteyn! He could see it yet, passing like a shadow along the trees.
It is easy, Monsieur Marche, to see that you are the nephew of the Vicomte de Morteyn." "Monsieur Marche," said the young dragoon officer, respectfully, "is a friend of General Farron." "I had the honour to be attached as correspondent to his staff in Oran," said Jack. The old general held out his hand with a gesture entirely charming. "I envy General Farron your friendship," he said.
That night she came to his bedside and kissed him, saying: "To-morrow you shall carry my love and my thanks to Lorraine for her care of the horse." "I can't," muttered Jack. "Pooh!" said Madame de Morteyn, and closed the bedroom door; and Jack slept better that night.
At ten o'clock that night Jack stepped from the ballroom to the terrace of the Château Morteyn and listened to the distant murmur of the river Lisse, below the meadow. The day of horror had ended with a dozen dropping shots from the outposts, now lining the banks of the Lisse from the Château de Nesville to Morteyn.
He felt lonely and a little despondent, and he walked along the road to the shrine of Our Lady of Morteyn and sat down at her naked stone feet. And as he sat there smoking, twirling his shooting-cap in his hands, without the least warning a horseman, advancing noiselessly across the turf, passed him, carbine on thigh, busby glittering with the silver skull and crossbones.
During the next two weeks Jack Marche drove into Paradise fourteen times, and fourteen times he drove out of Paradise, back to the Château Morteyn. Heaven is nearer than people suppose; it was three miles from the road shrine at Morteyn.
He lies in his room all day, silent, ghastly white. He does not believe that Alixe did what she did and died there at Morteyn. Oh, I am glad you are here. Jack says you must tell Rickerl nothing about Sir Thorald; nobody is to know that now all is ended." "Yes," said Dorothy. When they came to the house, Archibald Grahame and Lady Hesketh met them at the door.
"The dear, brave fellows!" she cried, impulsively, whereat every man reddened, and Tricasse grew giddy with emotion. He tried to speak; his emotion was great. "In my capacity of ex-pompier," he gasped, then went to pieces, and hid his eyes in his hands. The "Terrors of Morteyn" wept with him to a man.
The huge Saxon officers, beaming with good-nature, mixed amiably with the sour-visaged Brunswick men and the stiff-necked Prussians. In the long dining-room dinner was nearly ended. Facing each other sat the old Vicomte and Madame de Morteyn, he pale, dignified, exquisitely courteous, she equally pale but more gentle in her sweet dignity.
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