Luc made little of the incident of the house opposite, but had enough curiosity to ask the doorkeeper of his own hotel who owned the mansion, for the extraordinary beauty and terror of the tall man who had arrived in the sedan remained in his mind even through other thoughts. He was told that both the houses opposite were empty, and only inhabited by a caretaker. It was believed they belonged to some noble who was always at Versailles; at least it was not supposed that they were for sale. Luc, considerably surprised, was drawn by this to give some attention to the house where he had last night observed the little scene through the first-floor window. It was, like the neighbouring mansion, closed and shuttered, and had an air of long desertion; no sign nor coat of arms nor any ornamentation distinguished it. It was neither large nor pretentious, boasted no courtyard, nor even a lamp over the plain door. It became clear to Luc that it was used for some intrigue, romantic, political, sordid, or commonplace, and that last night the lady, shaken out of long caution by her companion’s terror, had carried a lamp into a front room, forgetting that the shutters had been taken down. Luc would have thought no more of it, save that he could not easily dismiss the unusual beauty of the face upturned in the lamplight, nor the peculiar sick terror shown by a man, presumably on a gallant adventure, at the, after all, common enough sight of a coffin being carried through the streets.

Yet soon enough his own affairs engrossed him wholly, and the silent little drama was dismissed from his mind.

He answered M. Voltaire’s letter; he longed to wait on him, but dare not intrude on the great man. M. de Caumont was now in Paris, and Luc went to see him, taking the eulogy written on his son, Hippolyte de Seytres. M. de Caumont was warm and pleasant, but Luc was not inspired to show the tender words he had written on his dead friend. M. de Caumont was not like his son. Luc keenly felt the difference; his native shyness rushed over him and tied his tongue. He spoke neither of his hopes, his letter to M. Amelot, nor of M. de Voltaire’s letter to him. He left M. de Caumont’s hotel with a feeling of slight depression, and was walking absorbed in sad thought down the quiet street when a coach drew up and Carola Koklinska’s voice hailed him.

Luc paused and uncovered. The coach was at a standstill beside the posts that divided the footway from the road; the blind had been pulled aside, and the lady was looking from the window. Luc had recognized her voice instantly; he would not so soon have recognized her person. She wore a dark red “capuchin” closed under the chin, and her hair showed in the folds of it, white and stiff with pomade.

“You in Paris!” she said swiftly. “Why was I not to know?” she added gravely.

His real reasons would have seemed absurd in speech, and he was slow with inventions; he blushed and looked at her seriously.

“I am going home,” said Carola. “Will you come with me, Monsieur? I have a garden I should like to show you.”

He bowed in acceptance, still silent. Her lackey dismounted from behind and opened the coach door; Luc stepped into the interior, which was lined with white satin and full of a keen perfume.

He took the seat opposite the Countess; she occupied the whole of hers with her full skirts, which were of gold brocade of an unusual Eastern pattern, and the long clinging folds of the crimson “capuchin.”

Her dark face looked the darker for the powdered hair; the cheeks were still hollow, but all her outline was curved and soft, and her lips were a warm, pale red; her rather sombre eyes were clear and reflective in expression. She wore diamond ear-rings of remarkable size and brilliance, and all her garments and the appointments of her coach showed of noticeable richness. Luc reflected how unaware of her wealth and position he had been when they were climbing the Bohemian rocks together.

“I thought you would come to Paris,” she remarked. “Do you wish to enter politics? You should be at Versailles.”

“Why, perhaps, Madame,” assented Luc. “But Paris is very interesting to one who knows so little of the cities of the world as myself.”

She gave him a full look.

“Oh,” she said slowly; then she added, “But you must meet people, know people, court people—and every one worth meeting, knowing, courting is at Versailles. Shall I help you?”

“I should be deeply grateful,” answered the Marquis simply. “I have no acquaintances at the Court.”

Carola did not answer; she was gazing out of the window. He had already, in Bohemia, guessed her to be a woman of few words, and this impression was confirmed, for the only opening for conversation they had—the campaign of last year—she never mentioned.

The coach drove soon through the massive gates of an hotel that Luc took to be the residence of her brother-in-law, and the Marquis handed her out at the steps of the fine door; it was not the house that had been pointed out to him as the HÔtel Dubussy. As he alighted he noticed a light curricle pass along the street driven by a lady ostentatiously placed high and alone on the box with a black servant behind. Her dress was pale and showy; veils and ribbons flew behind her. The passers-by stared, and so did Luc, for he recognized in her fair, slightly over-opulent beauty the woman whom he had seen last night in the house opposite.

“Who is that lady?” he asked, for the Countess was looking at her very keenly.

Carola again gave him her full, almost blank glance.

“I do not know,” she answered, rather strangely, he thought, then added, all in a breath, “Do not let us go into the house; I want to show you the garden.”

She led the way to a door at the side of the mansion—a tall door with a ring-shaped handle—and, opening it, beckoned the Marquis to follow her. They went down a narrow stone passage with a wall one side and the house the other; then the opening of another gate admitted them into the garden.

Luc had been prepared for splendour of statuary, walk, arbour, and fountain, after the designs of LenÔtre, or perhaps some Eastern fantasy of trellises and hanging creepers. What he saw, as Carola Koklinska motioned him to pass her, was utterly different.

He found himself in a large garden bounded by high walls on all sides save one, where the sombre, dark pile of the mansion overshadowed it; a narrow, neglected gravel path ran round under the walls, from which it was only separated by an unkempt edging of long grass and thick-leaved weeds. At the extreme end of the garden, which was of considerable length, was a row of seven very tall poplar trees which caught the last rays of sunlight in their topmost branches. For the rest the garden was a mere stretch of fresh May-time grass neglected and growing tall enough to bend in a sad fashion before the slight evening breeze.

Near the poplars was a plain wooden seat, and behind this showed the sole flowers in the garden—a clump of wallflowers growing out of, and on, the high brick wall.

Luc noticed the poplars first, for their great height and straightness reminded him of the silver firs in Bohemia, then the flowers, their sturdy charm and the bold lustre of their colouring.

“Do you like this place, Monsieur?” asked Carola, as she closed the door behind her.

“It reminds me of a convent or a prison, Madame,” he answered; “but it is doubtless a fair place for meditation.”

They were walking slowly down the gravel path, towards the poplar trees. Luc looked back and saw that the windows of the house were all shuttered, and that there was no sign of life.

“Is this your sister’s hotel, Countess?” he asked.

“No,” she answered; “mine. I told you that I came to Paris to attend the Queen; but I have left that employment. I lead a life of leisure. I am not so often at the Court.”

“Forgive me,” he said, for he felt as if he had asked her for an explanation; “but I thought you wrote to me from the HÔtel Dubussy——”

“I did,” she interrupted. “Madame Dubussy is my sister; but I no longer live there.”

Luc looked at her and smiled.

“Do you know that I passed her house the other night and wondered if you were within? There was a great festival. Some one told me it was the HÔtel Dubussy, but when I saw this house I thought perhaps I had been mistaken.”

Carola drew the slim folds of the red “capuchin” over her stiff skirts.

“You are now in my house, a little outside the Porte St. Antoine. It is rather a lonely part of Paris,” she said. “I have not been to my sister’s house for some weeks.”

Luc did not answer. He liked her measured speech; she was careful with words. His rare dealings with women had taught him that it was an unusual gift in them. Even his mother at times threw words about in a cloud regardless of their meaning, almost of their sense, and he had known little ClÉmence de SÉguy deal in tangled periods that left her panting and worsted by her own language. But Carola used the foreign tongue that was so familiar to her with cautious care; her almost hesitating choice of sentences gave her a marvellous air of sincerity.

“Perhaps,” she continued, “you are wondering why I live here. You used to call me ‘Mademoiselle’ in Bohemia, but I am a widow.”

This fact, that explained both her wealth and her freedom, gave him that shock always given by a discovery about some one of whom we have known nothing, but imagined much.

“I should have realized that, I think,” he said simply; “but you seemed to me very young, Madame.”

They had now reached the bench under the wallflowers. Carola seated herself.

“I am thirty,” she said; “I looked the same at twenty. The man I was with in Bohemia was my husband’s brother. Madame Dubussy is his sister. Now tell me about yourself. Why did you come to Paris?”

Luc smiled; his whole exquisite face changed and lit. There was nothing in his heart that he could explain to a woman; the idea of it made him smile.

“I intend to enter politics, as you surmised,” he answered. “I am a poor man, Madame, and have had to begin my career afresh.”

“Did they want you to remain in Aix?” she asked.

“My family? Yes.”

“But you have a great ambition, Monsieur.”

He was still smiling.

“How do you know so much about me?” he asked.

For the first time an expression came into her serene voice; it was an expression of tenderness.

“Anyone would know everything about you, Monsieur, by looking at your face,” she answered; then she turned and picked a spray of wallflower from behind her and turned it over and over between her fingers.

The Marquis seated himself on the other end of the bench; he was wondering what whim caused her to keep this dreary, closed-in, barren garden, what fancy made her bring him there, where they were as remote from the world as they had been when enwrapped by the Bohemian snowstorms.

The whole square of grass was in shadow; only in the upper leaves of the poplars the reluctant light still quivered. The air was rather cool and the sky a dome of colourless light.

“There is a street at the end of the garden,” said Carola—“the Rue Deauville, still the place is very quiet.”

“Will you continue to live here?” he asked, for this abode seemed neither like her home nor the residence of any wealthy noblewoman, pretentious to stateliness though it was.

“No,” answered the Countess. “I am going to Vienna this summer.”

She was still occupied in twirling the sprig of wallflower and did not raise her eyes. The gorgeous quality of her appearance, delicate and complete, was an anomaly with the humble and neglected garden. Her hood had slipped back, and the long, stiff grey curls hung against her neck and threw up the dusky shadow under her chin.

“It is strange enough,” said Luc, “that we two, meeting so curiously in war-time, should be sitting here in this utter peace.”

“Do you regret the war?” she asked.

He would not answer that. She saw the pride that held him silent in the profile turned towards her.

“You are better suited,” she said, “for war than politics, Monsieur.”

She was looking now at him, not at the flower turning in her fingers.

“My God,” she cried, with sudden soft force, “I wonder if you know what kind of work politics is!”

He thought of M. de Richelieu.

“I know well enough,” he said; “but there are great men still in France, and I am resolved to serve the King.”

“Have you seen the King?” she asked quickly.

“No, Madame.”

“Ah, well, they call him Louis the Well-Beloved, do they not?”

“How could he be otherwise—young, glorious, brave, the hope of France?” A flash came into his voice and he raised his brows in a little frown, as was his habit when excited.

Carola Koklinska moved in her seat, so that her silk mantle fell apart over the long sheen of her gold gown.

“You must come to the fÊte at Versailles next week,” she said.

“M. de Caumont, who is a friend of my family, requested my presence there with him,” answered Luc. “Shall I see you there, Madame?”

“Yes—oh yes.”

Luc was pleased with this meeting. Carola’s gravity, reserve, the slight mystery of her background all encouraged the abstract ideas of strength, purity, and spirituality that he had associated with her image.

“I have often thought of you,” he said, with a very tender chivalry, “and always as an inspiration.”

She coloured painfully.

“You are on the quest of glory, are you not?” she asked in a breath.

“You have my secret,” he answered, half wistfully, half proudly. For the moment both his reserve and his strength gave way before the impulse to utterly confide in this strange, cold creature and take her comfort, her admonitions, maybe her praise; but he checked the desire, though she might have read it in his hazel eyes as he turned them softly, yet mysteriously, on her. She rose, and he hardened instantly into utter reserve.

“I have no company to-night, or I would desire you to stay,” she said. “Some time you must come. I hope you will be very successful, Monsieur le Marquis.”

The words were very formal, but as she spoke she held out her right hand. Luc took it as he formed his answer, and dropped his grave eyes from her face to her fingers.

A curious little shock of surprise and dismay brought the colour to his cheeks. On the Countess’s forefinger was a diamond ring curiously set round with points formed of sapphires—the very jewel Luc had flung at the feet of the page in the Governor’s house at Avignon, or its exact counterpart.

“Why are you silent?” she asked rather haughtily, and withdrew her hand.

“The ring you wear reminded me of another I saw in the possession of some one so different from you, Countess, that the mere connexion gave me a start.”

“Which ring?” She wore several.

“The diamond, Madame, on your first finger.”

“That is very extraordinary!” she exclaimed.

“In what way, Madame?”

She flushed now.

“Oh, I did not know there were two such rings, that is all.” She seemed desirous of dismissing the subject, and he had no excuse for pressing it, though he wondered that she should not carelessly have told him how she came by the jewel, and so have set at rest his first impression—that she was wearing the actual jewel M. de Richelieu had offered him as a bribe.

“I hope I shall see you at Versailles,” she said. She was walking towards the gate, and her stiff skirts rustled on the untidy gravel path. “I think you are on a sorrowful quest,” she added timidly; “forgive me.”

“Believe me that I am happy,” he answered gravely.

Above the dark bulk of the house was the primrose-coloured moon, a thin crescent; there was a shiver in the air. Luc looked at the Countess, and thought that her eyes were suddenly flushed with tears.

“If I could help you, if I could prevent it,” she began passionately, then checked herself and held out, curiously enough, her left hand. “Good-bye,” she said.

He kissed her fingers and left her. As he passed along the darkening street before her house he thought that he had never known the fading of the sky and the first glimmering of the moon of such poignant beauty.