showed him to his room.
The stranger looked round him with interest.
It was a large apartment, large and bare and old—but everything at Ancelles was old.
But the curtains to the bed, faded now, had once been rich and handsome. The tapestry across the door of a smaller room leading from the other, was still beautiful though worn with age.
Hugh Michelhurst shivered a little as he stood there, in the dim, dark, old-world chamber. There was something pathetic in the tale it told of bygone splendour, something sad and forlorn.
Then his eye fell on a bowl of vivid red roses standing on his dressing-table, and he smiled.
They at least were not old. Their splendour was undimmed. There was nothing faded in their fresh, glowing beauty; and who had put them there?
He went closer; he bent over them and drank in their sweet scent. And as he did it the old, sunny garden rose before him again. The little twisting paths, the roses so thick and luxuriant that they trespassed forward from their beds; the old broken fountain, with the water nymph bending eternally in graceful readiness to dive, and amongst them—the roses, the sunshine, the queer paths, and the old fountain—the little mistress of them all, slim, childish, with soft dark eyes, with pretty lips made for laughter, with the sun caught in the waves of her brown hair. His hands wandered gently over the roses as he stood and thought what a gracious little hostess she was! How sweetly she had welcomed him, asking no questions!
A wave of colour surged over his white face.
But he smiled as he sank down on to a chair.
His entry into the sweet, old-world garden had been supremely ridiculous. Moreover, he was terribly ashamed of himself as well as rueful.
But his sense of humour was strong enough to save either feeling from overpowering him. His arm began to pain him badly again. He shut his lips tightly and sat still.
Outside he heard a gay young voice. "It is a pity, Jeannette, that the sun does not shine into his room now. See how glorious is its setting to-night."
A pause.
Hugh Michelhurst guessed how the pause was filled by his little hostess's mocking answer:
"Why, Jeannette, how cross you are! And, anyway, in the morning the sun will wake him."
"It may rain, mamzelle."
"Rain?" with a little burst of prettiest laughter. "Why, where are your eyes, Jeannette? Rain? With that sky—that sunset? All, no! Even ma tante would not say that, and she always predicts rain, you know."
"It is her rheumatism, mamzelle; she feels it in her bones."
"Yes," carelessly. "Jeannette, he will need assistance—how careless I am! It is that I am so unused to entertaining a guest, and yet once Ancelles was noted for its hospitality——"
The pretty voice died away into the distance, and a few minutes later there was a discreet tap at the stranger's door, and the faded old manservant appeared, and, with an air, offered monsieur his humble services.
Two mornings had Stéphanie's prophecy been fulfilled. Two mornings the sun had wakened her guest, and now he was wondering if he dared stay and let it wake him a third.
"Madame ma tante" had put in an appearance once. She had welcomed the stranger with a stiff yet courteous stateliness that was as old-worldly as the garden and the château and everything pertaining thereto.
She was a confirmed invalid, and, till she sallied forth to welcome her niece's guest (Ancelles belonged to Stéphanie), had not left her room for nearly two years.
Hugh Michelhurst was duly presented, and made a favourable impression on "Madame ma tante." In half an hour the impression had faded. In an hour it was gone. "Madame ma tante" had forgotten his existence.
He was sitting now on the old, worn steps leading to the second terrace. His right arm rested on the step above, close by his hostess's dainty little feet.
The air was sunny and warm, and sweet with the scent of roses.
He wondered dreamily what had become of the world——
She smiled softly at his words.
A little breeze came and scattered the rose leaves in her lap—the soft, fragrant heap that she had gathered for pot-pourri—and roused the man.
He stooped to gather them up, but she stayed him.
"There are plenty more," she said.
"Yes," he said; "what a lovely old garden it is!"
He watched the pink deepen in her cheek, and the little dimples come and go as she smiled softly at his words.
Then he sighed.
"My arm is better," he said. "I"—doubtfully—"must go to-day."
"Must you? Will you not stay a little longer? It"—wistfully—"is nice to have a guest."
He looked up at her with his blue eyes full of love.
"It is good of you to say so," he said earnestly.
"Ancelles cannot offer much," she said, with a little stately air, "but it offers you a true welcome, monsieur, and one that will never fail you so long as you will stay with us."
"I have never," he said slowly, "had such a true welcome before."
His eyes made her restless.
She crushed the rose leaves in her hand, and scattered them abroad.
He picked them up and kept them.
"Do you never wonder," he said, "how I came to fall into your garden?"
"We are only glad that monsieur so fell, except for the sprained arm," answered the little mistress of Ancelles.
"I heard your voice," he said, looking up into her face. "I stood and listened, and then—I wanted to see the owner of the voice, and I climbed to the top of the wall and then—I fell."
"I thought only schoolboys behaved so," she said, but her pretty lips parted and her eyes smiled, in spite of herself.
"If I had been a schoolboy I should not have fallen."
"Why?"
"Because a schoolboy does not lose his head as I did, mademoiselle."
"And your footing, monsieur."
"The one was an outcome of the other."
She looked away across the sweet, smiling sunshine.
"Monsieur"—suddenly bending her gaze upon his face—"how came you to lose
