beside you until your waking. Now you are but a
little weak from fasting and excitement, and when you have rested and
eaten--"

"No," he pleaded; "now, at once!"

"Very well," she said, simply. She was silent a moment, as if arranging
her thoughts. "Your grandfather, a Richard Keith like yourself," she
began, "was a college-mate and friend of my brother, Henri Raymonde, and
accompanied him to La Glorieuse during one of their vacations. I was
already betrothed to Monsieur Arnault, but I--No matter! I never saw
Richard Keith afterwards. But years later he sent your father, who also
bore his name, to visit me here. My son, Felix, was but a year or so
younger than his boy, and the two lads became at once warm friends. They
went abroad, and pursued their studies side by side, like brothers. They
came home together, and when Richard's father died, Felix spent nearly a
year with him on his Maryland plantation. They exchanged, when apart,
almost daily letters. Richard's marriage, which occurred soon after they
left college, strengthened rather than weakened this extraordinary bond
between them. Then came on the war. They were in the same command, and
hardly lost sight of each other during their four years of service.

"When the war was ended, your father went back to his estates. Felix
turned his face homeward, but drifted by some strange chance down to
Florida, where he met _her_"--she glanced at the portrait over the
mantel. "Helene Pallacier was Greek by descent, her family having been
among those brought over some time during the last century as colonists
to Florida from the Greek islands. He married her, barely delaying his
marriage long enough to write me that he was bringing home a bride. She
was young, hardly more than a child, indeed, and marvellously
beautiful"--Keith moved impatiently; he found these family details
tedious and uninteresting--"a radiant soulless creature, whose only law
was her own selfish enjoyment, and whose coming brought pain and
bitterness to La Glorieuse. These were her rooms. She chose them because
of the rose garden, for she had a sensuous and passionate love of
nature. She used to lie for hours on the grass there, with her arms
flung over her head, gazing dreamily on the fluttering leaves above her.
The pearls--which she always wore--some coral ornaments, and a handful
of amber beads were her only dower, but her caprices were the insolent
and extravagant caprices of a queen. Felix, who ador