The fortnight passed away rapidly and dizzily for her. They took her at once to Paris, and gave her no time for thought. She lived in a perpetual movement, which dazzled her as a blaze of fireworks would dazzle a forest doe. All the preparations of a great marriage were perpetually around her, and she began to realise that the world thought her lot most enviable and rare. Often her head ached and her ears were tired with the perpetual stream of compliment and felicitation, the continual demands made on her time, on her patience, on her gratitude. What would have been ecstasy to Blanchette was to her very nearly pain. There were moments when she almost longed for the great, still, walled gardens of the Dames de Ste. Anne, for her little whitewashed room, her rush chair in the chapel, her poor grey frock.

Then she thought of Othmar, and the colour came into her face and she was happy, though always unquiet and a little alarmed, as a dove is when its owner’s hand is stretched out to it.

To Yseulte he was a hero, a saint, an ideal. He had come so suddenly into her life, he had transformed it so completely, that he had something of a magical fascination and glory for her. She knew nothing of the House of Othmar, or of their position in finance; if she had understood it, she would have disliked it with the instinctive pride of a daughter of ‘les preux;‘ she had a vague, confused idea of him as the possessor of great power and wealth, but that taint of commerce, which in Othmar’s eyes soiled every napoleon he touched, had not dimmed his majesty for her.

She was never allowed to see him alone; her cousin insisted on the strictest observance of ’les convenances,’ and though a Romeo would have found means to circumvent these rules, her lover did not. He was glad of the stiff laws of etiquette which forbade him unwitnessed interviews. He felt that if she asked him straightway, with her clear eyes on his, what love he had for her, a lie would not come easily to his lips. He was lavish of all offerings to her, as though to atone materially for the feeling that was wanting in him. The Duchesse was herself astonished at the magnificence and frequency of his gifts. Unasked, he settled S. Pharamond and an estate in Seine et Oise upon her in absolute possession, while a commensurate income was secured to her to render her wholly independent in the future of any whim or will of his own.

‘He is really very generous,’ said the Duchesse to herself. ‘But what perplexes me is, he is not in love; not the very least in love! If he were, one would understand it all. But he is not in the very slightest degree amourachÉ; not half as much as Alain is.’

But she was heedful that no suggestion of this fact, which her observation made clear to her, should escape her before Yseulte or anyone else. If he were not in love, yet still wished to marry, it was his own affair; and she was not his keeper.

To Yseulte, it was absolute shame to find that she was regarded by all who approached her as having done something clever, won something enviable in the lottery of life. A vague distress weighed on her before the motives which she felt were attributed to her.

When her cousin said to her, ‘Fillette, you were really very audacious when you went to gather those flowers at S. Pharamond. But audacity succeeds—Voltaire and NapolÉon were right,’ she could have wept with humiliation and indignation.

‘Perhaps he thinks as badly of me, too!’ she thought, in that perplexity which had never ceased, since his gift of the ivory casket, to torment her.

‘There is storm in the air,’ said the Duc once to his wife; ‘Othmar will be like one of those magicians who used to raise a force that they could neither guide nor quell. He is making a child worship him, and forgetting that he will make her a woman, and that then she will not be satisfied with being hung about with trinkets, and set ankle-deep in gold like an Indian goddess. I am quite sure that this marriage, which pleases you all so much, will be a very unhappy one—some day.’

‘You think what you wish—all men do,’ said his wife. ‘I have not a doubt that it will be perfectly happy—as happy as any marriage is, that is to say. She will adore him; men like to be adored. You can only get that from somebody very young. He will never say an unkind word to her, and he will never object, however much she may spend. If she cannot be content with that——’

The Duc laughed derisively.

‘Gold! gold! gold! That is the joy of the cabotine, not of Yseulte de Valogne. What she will want will be love, and he will not give it her. With all deference to you, I see the materials for a very sombre poem in your ÉpopÉe.’

‘I repeat, your wish is father to your thought. On the theatres women do rebel, and stab themselves, or other people, but in real life they are very much more pliable. In a year’s time she will not care in the least about Othmar himself, but she will have grown to like the world and the life that she leads in it. She will have learnt to amuse herself; she will not fret if he pass his time elsewhere——’

‘You are entirely wrong,’ said de Vannes, with irritation. ‘She is a child now, but in a few weeks she will be a woman. Then he will find that you cannot light a fire on grass and leave the earth unscorched. She has the blood of Gui de Valogne. She will not be a saint always. If she find herself neglected, she will not forgive it when she shall understand what it means. If he be her lover after marriage, all may be well; I do not say the contrary. But if he neglect her then, as he neglects her now——’

‘Pray, do not put such follies into her head. Neglected! When not a day passes that he does not send her the most marvellous presents, does not empty on her half the jewellers’ cases out of Europe and Asia.’

‘He makes up in jewels what he wants in warmth,’ said Alain de Vannes. ‘At present she is a baby, a little saint, an innocent; as ignorant as her ivory Madonna; but in six months’ time she will be very different. She will know that she belongs to a man who does not care for her; she will want all that he does not give her; she will be like a rich red rose opening where all is ice——’

‘You go to the theatres till you get melodramatic,’ said his wife, with contempt. ‘I do not believe she will ever have any passions at all; she will always be the ivory saint.’

Alain de Vannes laughed grimly.

‘Women who are beautiful and have good health are never saints,’ he said, ‘and saints are not married at sixteen.’

‘FranÇoise Romaine was,’ said his wife, who always had the last word in any discussion.

Othmar was more restless than he had ever been in his life, more dissatisfied, and more impatient of fate. Yet he was not sure that he would have undone what he had done, even if honour would have allowed him.

The tenderness which Yseulte had awakened in him, though it could not compete with the passion another had aroused in him, made him feel a charm in her presence, a solace in her youthfulness. The restrictions imposed on their intercourse sustained the mystic spiritual grace which the young girl had in his eyes, and it prevented any possible chance of disillusion or of fatigue on his part. Hers was really the virginal purity, as of a white rosebud which has blossomed in the shade. He was not insensible to its beauty, even whilst a beauty of another kind had fuller empire upon him. He had done an unwise thing, but he said to himself continually, ‘At least I have made one innocent creature happy, and surely I shall be able to continue to do so; she can hardly be more difficult to content than a dove or a fawn.’

He forgot, as so many men do forget, that in this life, which seemed to him like the dove’s, like the fawn’s, there would be all the latent ardours of womanhood; that in the folded rosebud there was the rose-tinted heart, in which the bee would sting. They met at ceremonies, banquets, great family rÉunions, solemn festivities, in which all the Faubourg took part. She was intensely, exquisitely, happy when she was conscious that he was near her, but she was as silent as a statue and as timid as a bird when he looked at her or addressed her. Every day, every hour, was increasing what was to become the one absorbing passion of her life, but he was too indifferent, or too engrossed by other thoughts, to note the growth of this innocent love. Alain de Vannes saw much more of it than he.

She had the spiritual loveliness for him which S. Cecilia had in the eyes of the Roman centurion who wedded with her; a more delicate and more ethereal charm than that which only springs from the provocation of the senses. A caress to her seemed almost a profanity: to disturb her innocent soul with the grossness of earthly love seemed like a sort of sacrilege.

The whole of this time was a period of restless doubt with him, and the sense that he had not been honest with her rebuked him whenever he met the timid worship of her wistful eyes. He thought, ‘She would not give herself to me, if she knew!’

He was impatient to have all the tumult and folly which precede a great marriage over and done with. Every detail annoyed him; every formula irritated him.

‘All I entreat is, that there may be no delay,’ he said so often to her cousin, that Madame de Vannes ended in believing that he must be much more enamoured than his manner had betokened, and said with amusement to her husband:

‘It has often been disputed whether a man can be in love with two persons at one time: Othmar is so, unquestionably. It is like the bud and the fruit on the same bough of camellia.’

‘It is to be hoped that when the bud is a flower the fruit will fall,’ said de Vannes, with a grim smile.

‘You are not sincere when you say that,’ said the Duchesse, ‘and you know that both always fall—after a time.’

‘A law of nature,’ said her husband. ‘And it is a law of nature also that others come in their place.’

‘My dear friend,’ said Aurore de Vannes, with good-natured contempt, ‘when Yseulte shall have followed the laws of nature in that way, believe me, it is not you who will profit by them. You were good-looking ten years ago—or more—but absinthe and bacarat does not improve the looks after five-and-twenty, and you have crow’s-feet already, and will soon have to dye your hair if you wish still to look young. Yseulte will never think of you except as a vieux cousin who was kind enough to give her a locket—if she will even do that when she has got all the diamonds that she will get as Countess Othmar.’

Meantime, Othmar himself was constantly saying to the Duchesse:

‘I put myself completely in your hands; only, all I beseech of you, Madame, is not to delay my marriage longer than you are absolutely obliged.’

‘He does not say his happiness,’ thought Madame de Vannes, as she said aloud, ‘Well, what will seem terrible to you? I think I ought to exact a delay of at least six months. She is so very young.’

‘It is her youth that is delightful to me,’ he replied abruptly. ‘I am old enough to need its charm. I should be glad if you would consent to our nuptials very soon—say within a fortnight. I have already instructed my solicitors to meet you and to make whatever settlements you and the Duc de Vannes may desire upon Mademoiselle de Valogne.’

‘What! carte blanche?’ thought Cri-Cri, with a wonder which she took care to conceal, whilst she objected that such speed as he desired was impossible, was quite unheard of, would be indecorous: there were so many things to be done; but in the end she relented, consented to name that day month, and reflected that he should pay for his haste in the marriage contract. It would make no difference to herself whether he settled ten millions or ten pence on her young cousin, but it seemed to her that she was not doing her duty unless, in condescending to ally herself with la Finance, she did not shear its golden fleeces unscrupulously.

In her own mind she reflected that it was as well the marriage should take place speedily, for she perceived that his heart was not much in it. She divined that some alien motive actuated him in his desire for it, and she would have regretted if any breach had occurred to prevent it; for, although she professed to her intimate friends that she disliked the alliance excessively, she was nevertheless very gratified at her own relative having borne off such a great prize as Othmar. One never knew either how useful such a connection as his might not become.

‘I would never have let her marry into the Juiverie,’ she said to her husband. ‘But Othmar is quite different; his mother was an English duke’s daughter, his grandmother was a de Soissons-Valette, he has really good blood.’

‘And besides that,’ said de Vannes savagely, ‘he is a man whom all Europe has sighed to marry ever since he came of age. Why do you talk such nonsense to me? It is waste of good acting!’

‘As you wasted your medallion,’ said his wife, with a malicious enjoyment. ‘If she had taken the veil, you would have been quite capable of eloping with her, the very infamy of the action would have delighted you. But Othmar will certainly not let you make love to his wife; he is just the sort of man to be jealous.’

‘Of Nadine Napraxine, not of his own wife!’ said de Vannes, with an angry laugh. ‘Marry them quickly, while he is in the mind, and before Madame Napraxine can spoil the thing. In six months’ time he will return to her, but that will not matter; our little cousin will be Countess Othmar, and will probably learn to console herself.’

‘You are not hopeless?’ said his wife, much amused. ‘Well, I do not think with you. I believe that Nadine Napraxine has never been anything to Othmar; that the child, on the contrary, is passionately in love with him; and that the marriage will be a very happy one.’

Alain de Vannes shrugged his shoulders. He was very angry that the matter had turned out as it had done; the more angry that it was wholly impossible for him to display or to express his discomfiture, and that he was compelled to be amiable to Othmar and to all the world in relation to it, and bear himself before everyone as the friend and guardian of his wife’s cousin. His fancy for her had been a caprice rather than anything stronger, but it was resentful in its disappointment and impotence, and might even be capable of some vengeance.

FaÏel had left sweet, solemn memories with the girl: the green gloom of the fern-brakes and the wooded lanes, the soft grey summers, and the evenings with their mysterious silvery shadows; the silent corridors, the tolling bells, the altars with their white lilies, the pathetic monotonous voices of the nuns—all were blent together in her recollection into a picture full of holiness and calm. Now that she knew what the gipsy woman had meant, she wished to be there for a little while to muse upon her vast happiness, her wondrous future, and consecrate them both.

She asked for, and obtained, permission to go to her old convent in retreat for the two weeks before her marriage. Madame de Vannes was inclined to refuse what she regarded as excessive and eccentric, but Othmar obtained her consent.

It pleased him that she should pass her time before her marriage with the holy women who had trained her childhood; it was not so that Nadine Napraxine had spent the weeks preceding her soulless union.

‘You wish not to see her for two whole weeks?’ said the Duchesse, suspiciously.

‘I wish her to do always what she wishes,’ he answered.

‘She will be a very happy woman then,’ said Cri-Cri, drily.

He added, with a little hesitation: ‘It is her unlikeness to the world, her spirituality, which has charmed me; I wish her to retain them.’

‘It will be difficult,’ said the Duchesse, with a laugh. ‘Fillette,’ she said with amusement to her young cousin, ‘I do not know why you are so very solemn about it all; I assure you the soul has very little to do with marriage, as you will find out soon enough. Why should you go in retreat as if you were about to enter religion?’

Yseulte coloured; she answered timidly: ‘I am forgetting God; it is ungrateful; I am too happy; I mean—I grow selfish, I want to be quiet a little while to remember——’

The Duchesse laughed, much amused: ‘ You ought decidedly to have taken the veil; you will be a religieuse manquÉe! At your age I thought of nothing but of my balls and my bouquets, and of the costumes they gave me, and of the officers of the Guides—Alain was in the Guides, he was very good-looking at that time. I must say Othmar and you are like no lovers in the world that I have ever known.’

However, she gave her permission, and Yseulte went to the ancient stonebuilt fortress-like house of FaÏel, where the quiet corridors were filled with the smell of dried herbs from the nuns’ distillery and the little grey figures of the children played noiselessly under the leafless chestnut avenues of the tranquil gardens.

It was all so welcome to her after the babble of Blanchette, the tumult of congratulation, the succession of compliments, the perpetual sense of being exhibited and examined, discussed and depreciated; but it did not change her thoughts very much, for even in her prayers her wondrous change of fate always seemed with her, and she found that even amongst her pious and unworldly Dames de Ste. Anne the betrothed of Count Othmar was received as a very different being to the dowerless Yseulte de Valogne; and something of that bitterness which so often came to her lover reached her through all her guilelessness. Even Nicole, also, embracing her with ardour and tenderness, with the tears running down her brown cheeks, and pleading for the right to send her pÉtiote the orange-blossoms and the lilies-of-the-valley for her bridal-dress, yet amidst her joyful tears and tearful joy had not forgotten to whisper: ‘And, dis donc, ma mignonne, you will say a word now to the Count Othmar to get my husband the municipal concession to put up the steam mill? It will make our fortune, my angel, and I know what a happiness that will be to you!’

‘A fortune! Money, money! It seems all they think of in the world!’ the child reflected sadly. ‘What can Nicole and Sandroz want with more money? They are very well off, and they have no children, no relations even; and yet all they think about is laying by one napoleon on the top of another! It is horrible! Even the Mother Superior has never said to me how good he is, how kind, how generous; she only says that I am fortunate because he is so rich! They make me feel quite wicked. I want to tell them how mean they are! Why am I so much better and greater in their sight because I am going to become rich too? I thought they cared for none of those things. But our Reverend Mother asks me for a new altar service as Blanchette asked me for a turquoise necklace! I understand why he is always a little sad. He thinks no one cares for him, for himself.’

And, after many days and nights of most anxious thought and most entreating prayer, she gathered up all her courage and wrote a little letter to Othmar, the only one which she had ever addressed to him; she was afraid it was a strange thing to do, and one perhaps unmaidenly, but she could not resist her longing to say that one thing to him, and so she wrote:

‘Monsieur,—I do not know whether I ought to say it, and I hope you will forgive me if it be wrong to say so, but I have thought often since I hear and see so much of your great wealth that perhaps—perhaps—you may imagine it is that which I care for; but indeed I do not; if you were quite poor, very poor to-morrow, it would be just the same to me, and I should be just as happy. I do pray you to believe this.

‘Yours, in affection and reverence,
’Yseulte.’

She had hesitated very long before she ventured to sign herself so, but in the end it seemed to her that it could not be very wrong as it stood: she owed him both affection and reverence—even the Mother Superior herself would say so.

She enclosed the little note in a letter to her cousin the Duchesse, knowing that otherwise it would not be allowed to pass the convent walls. When Madame de Vannes received it she looked at it with suspicion.

‘If it should be any nonsense about Nadine Napraxine?’ she thought with alarm; ‘if it should be any folly that would break the marriage?’

She decided that it would be unwise to send it to Othmar without knowing what it said, so she broke the little seal very carefully and read it. Something in it touched her as she perused the simple words, written so evidently with a hand which trembled and a heart that was full. She sealed it again and despatched it to its destination. ‘Poor little simpleton,’ she thought, ‘why did she take the trouble to say that? She will not make him believe it!’

But he did believe it.

It was because she made the belief possible to him that the child had seemed to him like a young angel who brought healing on her wings; and the love which did not venture to avow itself, but yet was visible in every one of these timid sentences, went to his heart with sweetness and unconscious reproach. He wrote back to her:

‘I believe you, and I thank you. You give me what the world cannot give nor command.’

And he added words of tenderness which, if they would have seemed cold to an older or a less innocent recipient, wholly contented her, and seemed to her like a breath from heaven.

The fortnight soon passed, and after its quiet days at FaÏel, filled with the sounds so familiar to her of the drowsy bells, the rolling organ swell, the plaintive monotonous chaunts and prayers, the pacing of slow steps up and down long stone passages, the grinding of the winch of the great well in the square court, she felt calmed and strengthened, and not afraid when the Mother Superior spoke of all the responsibilities of her future.

To her, marriage was a mystic, spiritual union; all she knew of it was gathered from the expressions borrowed from it to symbolise the union of Christ and His saints. She went to it with as religious and innocent a faith as she would have taken with her to the cloister had they sent her there. If any human creature can be as pure as snow, a very young girl who has been reared by simple and pious women is so. Even the Duchesse de Vannes felt a vague emotion before that absolute ignorance of the senses and of the passions of life.

‘It is stupid,’ she said to herself. ‘But it is lovely in its way. I can fancy a man likes to destroy it—slowly, cruelly—just as a boy pulls off butterflies’ wings.’