But for the fire burning in the grate, nothing had changed in the dining room at Old Newton. The table was laid with a white cloth to the floor; the same massive howl, filled with the white grapes of the North, stood in the center of it. Nothing had changed since the Marchesa lunched there, on her way to Oban, except that the light of the morning rather than the midday entered through the big windows cut in the south wall. And except that another woman sat there, beyond the Duke of Dorset, at the table—a dark-haired, beautiful woman, in a rose-colored morning gown. Some letters lay beside her plate, and she opened one of them, while the butler moved about, putting breakfast on the sideboard. A fragment of newspaper clipping fluttered out on the cloth. She put her finger on it, but, for the moment, did not take it up. She read the note and then looked across the table smiling.

"The Marchesa is frightfully anxious about our home-coming to Dorset. She says that a real dowager may slur over the details of an ancient custom, but that an adopted dowager must have everything to the letter."

Then she took up the fragment of newspaper clipping.

"Oh," she said, "here is something about you," and she read it aloud.

"'The speech of the Duke of Dorset, in the House of Lords, a few days ago, in which he urged a dissolution of the Japanese alliance, and, in its stead, a closer relation of all the English-speaking people, was a significant utterance. It is the direct expression of an opinion that has been slowly gathering strength, both here and in the United States of America. It will be recalled that the Duke was on the Pacific Coast at the time of the recent Japanese rising, and was rescued, with his party, by His Majesty's gunboat Cleavewaive. The gunboat had put the Duke ashore on the coast of Oregon, on its annual cruise south, in the interest of British shipping and to show the flag, and it returned to pick him up when the Captain learned of the opening of hostilities.

"'It is doubtless true, as the Duke said, that the rising was a first move of Japan in its long-threatened conflict with the United States, and was only rendered abortive by the fact that all the white men of the Pacific Coast, both American and Canadian alike, moved as one people against the Japanese; thereby forcing Great Britain to notify Japan that, in the event of the matter taking on the aspect of a national conflict, she would support her colony.

"'It, perhaps, ought to be added that the personal American alliance which the Duke has recently made may account in some degree for his ardor.'"

When she came to the last paragraph of this editorial, the tone of her voice underwent a perceptible change.

"I should have imagined," she said, "that a 'personal alliance' would be more seriously regarded in England. I have been told that a marriage is considered in this island to be 'a great hereditary trust in perpetuity.' Do I quote accurately?"

The bronzed man, in his gray tweeds, watching her over the table, gave no sign.

"To the letter," he said. "It is so considered."

"And is it not considered," she continued, "that against the great duties of this trust no mere 'personal inclination' ought to stand?"

"Well," said the Duke, "I should not hold that rule to be always without an exception."

"Really!" she said. "But I suppose it is always the case in England that, when a marriage is being arranged, one ought to follow the direction of one's family, as, for instance, a prince, called to rule a hereditary kingdom, ought to hear his parliament."

"That," said the Duke, "is always the case."

"Always?" There was now another note in her voice.

"Always," replied the Duke. "There should never be an exception to that rule; one ought to marry the woman selected by one's family."

"I thought," said the Duchess, "that I knew of an exception to the rule. I thought I knew of a man who found a wife for himself."

"I know the case quite well," said the Duke, "and you are mistaken."

"Mistaken!" she said.

"Yes," he said, "there was never in this world a woman more definitely selected by a family than the one you have in mind; there was never in this world a woman that a family made more desperate, unending, persistent efforts to obtain. From the day that the first ancestor saw her in that doomed city, down through generations to the day that the last one saw her on the coast of Brittany, to the day that the living one of this house found her in the bay of Oban, this family has been mad to possess her."

The butler, having placed the breakfast on the sideboard, had gone out. Caroline sat with her fingers linked under her chin.

"But was he sure," she said, "was he sure that this was the woman?"

The Duke leaned over and rested his arm on the table.

"How could he doubt it!" he said. "He found her by the sea, and he found, too, the wicked king and the saint of God, and the doomed palace; and, besides that, the longing, the accumulated longing of all those dead men who had seen her, and loved her, and been mad to possess her, was in him, and by this sign he knew her."

"And the others," she said, "all the others, they have received nothing!"

"Nothing," he said.

"And is there one of them here, in this house, that I could see him!"

"The portrait," he said, "of the last one, the one who saw her on the coast of Brittany, is above the mantel in the other room."

"Let us go in and see him," she said.

They arose, leaving the breakfast untasted on the sideboard, and went out along the stone passage, into the other room. It, too, remained the same as on the day that the Marchesa entered it. The high window looking out over the fairy village, with the blue-haired ghost dog on his white stone doorstep; and, between, the Ardoch and the road leading to the iron door; and, within, the skins on the floor, the books in their cases, the guns behind the diagonal panes of leaded glass.

They stopped by the fire, under the smoke-stained portrait. For a little while they were silent there, before this ancestor looking down from his canvas. Then the man spoke.

"I think, Caroline," he said, "that all the love with which these dead men have loved you has been passed on to me.... And I think, Caroline, that you are somehow the answer to their longings.... I think that with a single consuming passion, one after the other, with an endless longing, these dead men have finally loved you into life—by the power of kisses that touched nothing, longings that availed nothing, loving that returned nothing.... And, with all this accumulated inheritance, is it any wonder that every nerve, every fiber, every blood drop of me is steeped in the love of you?"

The woman had remained unmoving, looking at the portrait above the mantel in its smoke-stained frame, now she turned slowly.

"Lift me up," she said.

He took her up and lifted her from the floor. But the long-withheld reward of that ancestor was denied him. When she came to the level of the man's shoulders, he suddenly gathered her into his arms. Her eyes closed, her lips trembled, the long sleeves of the morning gown fell away, her bare arms went warm and close around his neck.

And his mouth possessed her.

THE END