It was odd to see normal relations resumed next day at table. Abnormally normal indeed, for we were all a little too much at our ease, a trifle too friendly and natural. There was a chatting and a smiling, and a veritable phrensy of cruet-courtesy. It was "Do have another pancake, Mamma, they are so good today:" "now finish up the gateau, Suzanne, I don't think Louise ever made a better."

On the Countess' part there was little dissimulation, for her anxieties had calmed down with surprising ease. She had cornered me again, first thing in the morning, for "just one word."

"They have been talking to you, I know. How late you stayed with Elise! Not for the world would I try to learn their confidences, but one thing as their mother it is my duty and right to know. Tell me that my worst fears are without foundation."

"Absolutely." I looked her full in the face with a confidence-inspiring false honesty. After all, it was the truth; her worst fears, she had said plainly, were for Elise.

Elise alone could not dissimulate her yesterday. Red eyes no craft, no cosmetics, can conjure away. Suzanne was boisterously at ease; de Fouquier suave, unchanging. Suzanne's ease did not seem artificial. There had been a fright and a fuss yesterday, and trouble would no doubt break out again—one of these days. Meanwhile, she would eat, drink and be merry. How I envied her "meanwhile" temperament.

I had a bewildering mass of new impressions to digest, all of one day's serving. That mother and two daughters, from their different angles, all saw menfolk in the same light was a testimony that overbore my passionate resistance. Many men, at least, must be as evil as they said. Frenchmen perhaps. I idealized my own men only the more. Similarly, while the lack of all friendship between mother and daughters sank into my mind as a fact that was probably general, I idealized my own mother all the more. Perhaps the Fifth Commandment is only ever perfectly obeyed by children whose parents are dead.

Above all, I could now visualize to my heart's content without any breach of Resolution. I melo-dramatized the intrigues and troubles of this family, casting myself (of course) for the leading part. I had a friend to rescue from a villain, a family to rid of its foe; secrets and papers with which this man threatened my friends to discover and to use for his own dramatic undoing: here was a rÔle I had been destined for from birth....

And here for the first time in this record I shall deviate from the plan of absolute completeness at which I have aimed, and shall pass by much in silence. The whirlpool of petty melodramatic intrigues into which I was now plunged—though no doubt more violent in my imagination than in sober fact—might yet form the subject of an exciting tale. But it has no place in this narrative, which deals with MARY LEE. The person who took her full share in these doings, in absorbing (or, if need be, in worming out) still more intimate confidences from the three Frenchwomen, in gracefully raiding M. de Fouquier's quarters and hunting among his papers, in discovering the prattlings and preferences of the servants, in establishing that Gabrielle was for us and that FranÇois was for him, in discovering that while the villainy and vileness of Fouquier had probably been exaggerated by two of his friends his noble passionate character had certainly been overstated by the third, in taking a leading part in all the plans and jealousies and intrigues, which from Countess to Kitchen filled every person and place in this Norman mansion—this person was not the Mary I am chiefly concerned with, but that phantom-personality with brain and with appetites but without fears and without hopes, without love and without God, who, foisted upon me by the real Me's foolish plan of self-effacement, for this year or two ruled within my body, while the real Mary, lulled by the ease and emptiness of that time, lay dormant and almost for dead.

Thus it is that although across forty years the Bear Lawn days are as vivid in my heart as today's noontide, the years in France I can but vaguely reconstruct. Only my brain's memory, the one thing that all the Marys have shared in common, retains them; and what the brain but not the heart remembers is lifeless bones, dimensionless phantoms, as unreal as other people. ChÂteau Villebecq, the house, the park, the people, stand before my eyes—now, as I strive to conjure them up—like the cardboard scenes of a stage. When, years later, I first went to the play, the resemblance at once assailed me.

Hardly at all during this period, except at moments in my friendship with Elise, and except in prayer—and then I was no longer in France—was my soul awake. Not until the series of events in which voices from Tawborough and my soul's native surroundings spoke to me again.

To be sure, some of the escapades of that other person are clearer in my memory than others. The most foolish and fantastic is the one I remember best. Diary, rather than my heart, supplies the silly details.

One day I took the opportunity offered by Monsieur de Fouquier's absence on some distant farms to inspect the little downstairs office where he kept his records, received tenants and did business; also his bedroom, where the one object of interest—shades of Torribridge and keyhole-spied green box!—was the safe Elise had told me of.

Its solid sides discouraged me. A fine rÔle I had set myself, rescuer of noble families from scheming villains. How fantastic we were, I and my plans.

Then, by a stroke of luck, though at first sight it seemed the very reverse, de Fouquier fell ill. It was a kind of hay-fever which, while not serious enough (at any rate in France) for doctor's aid, kept him confined to his bed. The Countess meanwhile was debating a day in Rouen for purchases and visits.

"I ought to, you know. We may be away in Paris for months, and these things must be done. It is all so tiresome: the train tries me so, and I cannot travel alone. Oh, dear! And Elise and Suzanne both away, and Gabrielle or Pelagie are worse than I am on a journey, so flurried and silly. We have only a day or two left. I must go to Rouen tomorrow; but alone—"

I refused to take the laboured hint.

"Wouldn't you like to come, dear Mademoiselle?" after a while, pitifully.

"I should, Madame: very much! I love Rouen. But this headache"—I half-closed my eyes in approved shammer's fashion—"I mean I feel that if I don't take a little rest I shall be quite unfit for the journey to Paris: I should be a burden to you rather than a help. Of course tomorrow I may feel better—stay, is it not FranÇois who sometimes accompanies you?"

"At the worst he will have to do, though between ourselves I never really trust him."

"Though"—martyr-like resignation now that my point was won—"if you especially want me, Madame, of course—"

"Would not hear of it."

Thus I killed two birds with one lie, freeing the house for a whole day of its nosy proprietor and its chief spy.

Next morning I waited impatiently for their departure. From my window I watched the carriage out of sight, staring with superstitious zeal till the last inch of the last wheel had disappeared round the turn in the drive. Then I rang for Gabrielle.

"Mademoiselle requires?"

"To ask you a question. You would do anything for Mademoiselle Elise?"

"Anything, Mademoiselle. And for Mademoiselle also."

"Thank you, Gabrielle. In the matter I am going to talk about it is all one: Whatever I ask, you may take it as from your mistress. She sleeps badly, I think?"

"I don't see—"

"Wait. You take her up a tisane, a sleeping potion, sometimes at night when she is in bed? How strong is it?"

"As strong as Mademoiselle Elise requires. It is not well for it to be too strong. She sleeps half-an-hour later: with me it would be two little minutes. Once I could not sleep, and I took a little cupful: I slept for nine hours, and could not wake next morning. I was up late and Madame the Countess scolded. Perhaps Mademoiselle remembers?"

"So I do. Now listen, Gabrielle. FranÇois is away today with Madame. Who is taking Monsieur de Fouquier's meals to his bedroom?"

"I understand! It is I, Mademoiselle. I take him a tisane too, for his headaches. How much does Mademoiselle desire me to give?"

"As strong and as sure as you can without his guessing or noticing any after-effects. Ask me no questions. Let him have no suspicions. I want you to give it him now, this morning."

"Good, Mademoiselle. I take him a little meal between ten and eleven, and I will give it him soon after."

"Come and tell me the moment he has drunk it."

About eleven she returned. "Monsieur has drunk the tisane. I said it was good for the headache."

"Now wait a few minutes, then go into his room again to see if he is sleeping—you can pretend you left something—and come straight back and tell me. On your way back make sure that none of the other servants are about. I trust you. Mademoiselle Elise trusts you."

Ten minutes later. "He sleeps with open mouth: as soundly as a dormouse."

My heart was beating high as I slipped through his bedroom door, thoughtfully left ajar by Gabrielle. I had been hunting some pretext for my presence if he should wake and find me: I could invent none, and knew it would be useless if I could. For the first moment I dared not look at him. I stared craftily at the lower end of the bedclothes, then at the little mound made by his feet, then, very gradually, as though my neck (and courage) were turning on a clockwork spring, up the shape of his body under the quilt till at last I reached the open mouth of Gabrielle's report. He was in a deep sleep: I gave way for a moment to the curious pleasure of possessing another human being utterly unconscious beneath my gaze. Small clever head, black eyebrows, sensual lips, cruel little beard: I absorbed them all with a photographic sureness not possible before. It was the first time I had seen a man asleep in bed, and I added the fact with zest to my collections of first-times: first Meeting, first marketing, first omelette, first venison; first embrace, first Rapture.

But the quest, the keys. I had visualized all the probabilities, and prepared my scheme of search. Dressing-table and chest-of-drawers-top yielded nothing: I did not expect them to. I searched his clothes next, hoping to succeed before I should reach the most dangerous possibility: under the pillow. Coat was barren, waistcoat sterile. Then to breeches: some wifely atavism must explain the lithe speed with which I rummaged these, undeterred by a passing pang of modesty. Tobacco, coins, knife, handkerchief: sorry yield. As I threw the breeches back in disappointment on the chair, something metallic clicked: not, I fancied, either knife or money. Was there another pocket? Quickly I learnt a point in male sartorics, and the unsuspected hip-pocket gave up—yes, keys! In fumbling feverish haste I tried each one on the bunch; the safe was obdurate with all. Ill-success made me desperate. Panic seized me. He was awake, staring at me, ready to spring and strangle. He moved, he moved—yes, turned in his sleep, you shivering fool! Thank God no one saw my face in that moment of beastly fear.

Calm again, I tried the keys elsewhere. At last, in a little pink soap-box in the cupboard of the dressing-table, I discovered what I knew was the Treasure. One large key and one very fine and small. It was hard breathing as the one opened the safe, then the other a deed-box I found at the back within. Greedy trembling hands snatched packets neatly tied with red tape and endorsed with a description in Italian, with which I knew he was familiar and—God bless Miss de Mesurier and Lord Tawborough her paymaster—I also.

Packets of letters, incriminating documents, tell-tale scrolls! It was the trove, the triumph! What villainous secrets might they not hold?

But when Elise and I, with a rich sense of the historic importance of the occasion, set to, behind locked doors, to investigate our treasure, what did we discover? Long and affectionate letters from M. de Fouquier's mother to her well-loved son, friendly letters from his dead sister: what a meek, pathetic, uncriminal yield! I was moved almost to tears. It was we who were the criminals. And for a while our plots wilted....

I shall pass by much of this kind, as well as the whole diary-remembered general life of the Villebecq days: the excursions, the games, the visits, the chatterings, the mighty meals; the comfortable daily round in which we tasted everything—except everything, except love and God.