er a short silence, "which
told me that you wished to come to those friends to whom your father had
been so dear, all the past arose before me, and I felt that I ought to
forbid your coming. But I remembered how Felix and Richard had loved
each other before she came between them. I thought of the other Richard
Keith whom I--I loved once; and I dreamed of a union at last between the
families. I hoped, Richard, that you and Felice--"

But Richard was no longer listening. He wished to believe the whole
fantastic story an invention of the keen-eyed old madame herself. Yet
something within him confessed to its truth. A tumultuous storm of
baffled desire, of impotent anger, swept over him. The ring he wore
burned into his flesh. But he had no thought of removing it--the ring
which had once belonged to the beautiful golden-haired woman who had
come back from the grave to woo him to her!

He turned his face away and groaned.

Her eyes hardened. She rose stiffly. "I will send a servant with your
breakfast," she said, with her hand on the door. "The down boat will
pass La Glorieuse this afternoon. You will perhaps wish to take
advantage of it."

He started. He had not thought of going--of leaving her--_her_! He
looked at the portrait on the wall and laughed bitterly.

Madame Arnault accompanied him with ceremonious politeness to the front
steps that afternoon.

"Mademoiselle Felice?" he murmured, inquiringly, glancing back at the
windows of the sitting-room.

"Mademoiselle Arnault is occupied," she coldly returned. "I will convey
to her your farewell."

He looked back as the boat chugged away. Peaceful shadows enwrapped the
house and overspread the lawn. A single window in the wing gleamed like
a balefire in the rays of the setting sun.

The years that followed were years of restless wandering for Richard
Keith. He visited his estate but rarely. He went abroad and returned,
hardly having set foot to land; he buried himself in the fastnesses of
the Rockies; he made a long, aimless sea-voyage. Her image accompanied
him everywhere. Between him and all he saw hovered her faultless face;
her red mouth smiled at him; her white arms enticed him. His own face
became worn and his step listless. He grew silent and gloomy. "He is
madder than the old colonel, his father, was," his friends said,
shrugging their shoulders.

One day, more than three years after his visit to La Glorieuse, he found
himself on a deserted part of the F