n Brittany, the Pere Anselme read in his book of
meditations:

It is when the sky is clearest that the heaviest bolt falls--it
would be well for all good Christians to be on the alert.

And chancing to look from his cottage window, he perceived that a heavy
rain cloud had gathered over the Chateau of Heronac.

CHAPTER XIV

In the morning before they left Heronac, Sabine's elderly maid, Simone,
came to her with the face she always wore when her speech might contain
any reference to the past. She had been with Sabine ever since the week
after her marriage, and was a widow and a Parisian, with a kind and
motherly heart.

"Will madame take the blue despatch-box with her as usual?" she asked.

Sabine hesitated for a second. She had never gone anywhere without it in
all those five years--but now everything was changed. It might be wiser
to leave it safely at Heronac. Then her eyes fell upon it, and a slight
shudder came over her of the kind which people describe as "a goose
walking over your grave."

No, she could not leave it behind.

"I will take it, Simone."

"As madame wishes," and the maid went on her way.

* * * * *

When Sabine had reached London late on that evening in the June of 1907
on her leaving Scotland she found, in response to the wire she had sent
him from Edinburgh, Mr. Parsons waiting for her at the station, his
astonishment as great as his perturbation.

Her words had been few; her young mind had been firmly made up in the
train coming south. No one should ever know that there had been any
deviation from the original plan she had laid out for herself. With a
force of will marvellous in one of her tender years, she had controlled
her extreme emotion, and except that she looked very pale and seemed
very determined and quiet, there were no traces of the furnace through
which she had passed, in which had perished all her old conceptions of
existence, although as yet she realized nothing but that she wanted to
go away and to be free and forget her tremors, and presently join
Moravia.

The marriage had been perfectly legal, as the certificate showed, and
Mr. Parsons, whatever his personal feelings about the matter were, knew
that he had not the smallest control over her--and was bound to hand
over to her her money to do with as she pleased.

She merely told him the facts--that the marriage had been only an
arrangement to this end--Mr. Arranstoun