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“And Plancine?”

“She will die a grey-haired maid for thee, ‘O Richard! O my king!'”

“My sweet–my bird–my wife! Oh, that you could be that now and kiss me on to fortune! I should be double-souled and inspired. A few months, and Madame la Vicomtesse should ‘walk in silk attire.’ I flame at the picture. Why will your father not yield you gracefully, instead of plying us with that eternal enigma of Black Venn?”

“Because enthusiasm alone may not command wealth,” said a deep voice near them.

Papa had come upon them unobserved. The young man wheeled and charged while his blood was hot.

“Mr. De Jussac, it is a shame to hold me in this unending suspense.”

“Is it not better than decided rejection?”

“I have served like Jacob. You cannot doubt my single-hearted devotion?”

“I doubt nothing, my George” (about his accent there was no tender compromise)–“I doubt nothing, but that the balance at your bankers’ is excessive.”

“You would not value Plancine at so much bullion?”

“But yes, my friend; for bullion is the algebraic formula that represents comfort. When Black Venn slips his apron–“

George made a gesture of impatience.

“When Black Venn slips his apron,” repeated the father quietly, “I shall be in a position to consider your suit.”

“That is tantamount to putting me off altogether. It is ungenerous. It is preposterous. You may or may not be right; but it is simply farcical (Plancine cried, “George!”–but he went on warmly, nevertheless) to make our happiness contingent on the possible tumbling down of a bit of old cliff–an accident that, after all, may never happen.”

“Ah!” the quiet, strong voice went on; and in the old eyes turned moonwards one might have fancied one could read a certain pathos of abnegation, or approaching self-sacrifice; “but it will, and shortly, for I prophesy. It was no idle cruelty of mine that first suggested this condition, but a natural reluctance to sign myself back to utter loneliness.”

Plancine cried, “Papa! papa!” and sprang into his arms.

“A little patience,” said De Jussac, pressing his moustache to the round head, “and you will honour this weary prophet, I think. I was up on the cliff to-day. The great crack is ever widening. A bowling wind, a loud thunderstorm, and that apron of the hill will tear from its bondage and sink sweltering down the slopes.”

In the moment of speaking a tremor seized all his limbs, his eyes glared maniacal, his outstretched arm pointed seawards.

“The guillotine!” he shrieked, “the guillotine!”

In the offing of the bay was a vessel making for the unseen harbour below. It stood up black against the moonlight, its sails and yards presenting some fantastic resemblance to that engine of blood.

George stepped back and hung his head embarrassed. He had more than once been witness of a like seizure. It was the guillotine fright–the fright that had smitten the boy of fourteen, and had pursued the man ever since with periodic attacks of illusion. Anything–a branch, a door-post, a window, would suggest the hateful form during those periods–happily brief–when the poor mind was temporarily unhinged. No doubt, in earlier years, the fits had occurred frequently. Now they were rare, and generally, it seemed, attributable to some strong excitement or emotion.

Plancine knew how to act. She put her hand over the frantic eyes, and led the old man stumbling up the garden path. She was going to sing to him from the little sweet folk-ballads of the old gay France before the trouble came– [bb]!!!! “The king would wed his daughter Over the English sea; But never across the water Shall a husband come to me.” [bb] Love floated on the freshet of her voice straight into the heart of the young man who stood without.

II

Perhaps at first it had not been the least of the bitterness in M. De Jussac’s cup of calamity that his mere pride of name must adjust itself to its altered conditions. That the Vicomte De Jussac should have been expatriated because he declined when called upon to contribute his heart’s blood to the red conduit in the Faubourg St. Antoine was certainly an infamy, but one of which the very essence was that unquestioning acknowledgment of his rank. That the land of his adoption should have dubbed him Mr. Jussuks–in stolid unconsciousness, too, of the solecism–was an outrage of a totally different order–an outrage only to be condoned on the score that an impenetrable insular gaucherie, and not a malicious impertinence, was responsible for it.