nt wind and the vibration of the
tempestuous sea; upon the outer stones the gargoyles poured their noisy
waters--but this--but this was Paradise!

"The explanation must be mine," said he. "I was prying upon no amour,
but seeking to confirm some vague alarms and suspicions."

"They were, perhaps, connected with my father," she said, with a
divination that Count Victor had occasion to remember again.

"Your father!" he exclaimed, astonished that one more of his
misconceptions should be thus dispelled. "Then I have been guilty of the
unpardonable liberty of spying upon my hostess."

"A droll hostess, I must say, and I am the black-affronted woman," said
she, "but through no fault of mine. I am in my own good father's house,
and still, in a way, a stranger in it, and that is a hard thing. But you
must not distrust my father: you will find, I think, before very long,
that all the odd affairs in this house have less to do with him than
with his daughter Olivia."

She blushed again as she introduced her name, but with a sensitiveness
that Count Victor found perfectly entrancing.

"My dear mademoiselle," he said, wishing the while he had had a
_friseur_ at the making of his toilet that morning, as he ran his
fingers over his beard and the thick brown hair that slightly curled
above his brow,--"my dear mademoiselle, I feel pestilently like a fool
and a knave to have placed myself in this position in any way to your
annoyance. I hope I may have the opportunity before I leave Doom of
proffering an adequate apology."

He expected her to leave him then, and he had a foot retired, preparing
to re-enter his room, but there was a hesitancy in her manner that told
him she had something more to say. She bit her nether lip--the orchards
of Cammercy, he told himself, never bred a cherry a thousandth part so
rich and so inviting, even to look at in candle-light; a shy dubiety
hovered round her eyes. He waited her pleasure to speak.

"Perhaps," said she softly, relinquishing her brave demeanour--"perhaps
it might be well that--that my father knew nothing of this meeting,
or--or--or of what led to it."

"Mademoiselle Olivia," said Count Victor, "I am--what do you call it?--a
somnambulist. In that condition it has sometimes been my so good fortune
to wander into the most odd and ravishing situations. But as it happens,
_helas!_ I can never recall a single incident of them when I waken in
the morning. _Ma foi!_" (he remembered that ev