old my hand as he talked. But no doubt he does that
because I have lost my father."

Doubtless it was so; nevertheless it needs some little explanation to
make it clear why, after having been committed by D'Epernon to the care
of the King of Navarre, Claire and the Professor should still be in the
little town of Blois, with the young girl busily writing her journal,
and lifting her eyes at the end of every sentence to look across the
broad blue river at the squares and oblongs of ripening vintages which
went clambering irregularly over the low hills opposite.

"The Loire here in this place" (so she wrote) "is broad and
calm, not swift and treacherous like the Rhone, or sleepy like
the Seine, nor yet fierce like the Rhine as I saw it long ago,
lashing green as sea-water about the old bridge at Basel. I
love the Loire--a wide river, still and unrippled, not a
leaping fish, not a stooping bird, a water of silver flowing on
and on in a dream. And though my father is dead and I greatly
alone (save for old Madame Granier in her widow's crape) I
cannot feel that I am very unhappy. Perhaps it is wicked to say
so. I reproach myself that I lack feeling--that if I had loved
my father more, surely I would now have been more unhappy. I do
not know. One is as one is made.

"Yet I did love him--God knows I did! But here--it is so
peaceful. Sadness falls away."

And peaceful it certainly was. The Bearnais had gone back to his camp,
taking the Abbe John with him, where, in the incessant advance and
retreat of the Huguenot army, there was little room for fair maids.

Before he went away, the King had had a talk with Jean-aux-Choux and
with his host, Anthony Arpajon. They reminded him that for some months
at least, no one would be more welcome in Blois than this learned
Professor of the Sorbonne. Was not the Parliament of the King--the loyal
States-General--to be gathered there in a few weeks? And, meantime, the
provident Blesois were employed in making their rooms fit and proper for
the reception of the rich and noble out of all France, excepting only
the Leaguer provinces of the north and the Huguenot south-east from the
Loire to the Pyrenees.

"I would willingly keep the maid and the Professor," said Anthony, "but
it is of the nature of my business that there should be at times a
bustle and a noise of rough lads coming and going. And though none of
them w