Part 15 (2/2)

he said earnestly, taking Clara's hand. ”This is the first great trouble in my life. I have loved her very dearly. I decided to make great sacrifices for her. But I am not to have her--never.”

”I am so sorry for you, prince.” Clara squeezed his hand energetically.

”Nor her dot. That would have been so comfortable for me,” he said simply.

Clara hid a smile, and bade him an affectionate good-night.

As he pa.s.sed into the outer salle a childish figure in creamy lace rose before him, and a soft hand was held out. ”I know what has happened!”

she whispered pa.s.sionately. ”She has treated you scandalously! She cannot appreciate YOU!”

Prince Hugo stuttered and coughed and almost kissed the little hand which lay so trustingly in his. He found himself safely outside at last, and drove away, wretched to the soul.

But below his wretchedness something whispered: ”SHE appreciates me, and her dot is quite as large.”

CHAPTER XIII

George Waldeaux hummed a tune gayly as he climbed the winding maze of streets in Vannes, one cloudy afternoon, with Lisa.

”It is impertinent to be modern Americans in this old town,” he said.

”We might play that we were jongleurs, and that it was still mediaeval times. I am sure the gray walls yonder and the fortress houses in this street have not changed in ages.”

”Neither have the smells, apparently,” said Lisa grimly. ”Wrap this scarf about your throat, George. You coughed last night.”

George tied up his throat. ”Coughed, did I?” he said anxiously. He had had a cold last winter, and his wife with her poultices and fright had convinced him that he was a confirmed invalid. The coming of her baby had given to the woman a motherly feeling toward all of the world, even to her husband.

”Look at these women,” he said, going on with his fancy presently. ”I am sure that they were here wearing these black gowns and huge red ap.r.o.ns in the twelfth century. What is this?” he said, stopping abruptly, to a boy of six who was digging mud at the foot of an ancient ivy-covered tower.

”C'est le tour du Connetable,” the child lisped. ”Et v'la, monsieur!”

pointing to a filthy pen with a gate of black oak; ”v'la le donjon de Clisson!” ”Who was Clisson?” said Lisa impatiently.

”A live man to Froissart--and to this boy,” said George, laughing. ”I told you that we had gone back seven centuries. This fog comes in from the Morbihan sea where Arthur and his knights went sailing to find the Holy Greal. They have not come back. And south yonder is the country of the Druids. I will take you to-morrow and show you twenty thousand of their menhirs, and then we will sail away to an island where there is an altar that the serpent wors.h.i.+ppers built ages before Christ.”

Lisa laughed. He was not often in this playful mood. She panted as she toiled up the dark little street, a step behind him, but he did not think of giving her his arm. He had grown accustomed to regard himself as the invalid now, and the one who needed care.

”I am going for letters,” he called back, diving into a dingy alley.

The baby and its bonne were near Lisa. The child never was out of her sight for, a moment. She waited, standing a little apart from Colette to watch whether the pa.s.sers-by would notice the baby. When one or two of the gloomy and stolid women who hurried past in their wooden sabots clicked their fingers to it, she could not help smiling gayly and bidding them good-day.

The fog was stifling. As she waited she gave a tired gasp. Colette ran to her. ”Madame is going to be ill!”

”No, no! Don't frighten monsieur.”

George came out of the gate at the moment.

”Going to faint again, Lisa?” he said, with an annoyed glance around the street. ”Your attacks do choose the most malapropos times----”

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