nd closing the
door softly left them to their meditations and to each other.

CHAPTER XV

NEW HOPES

Now, that I was well out of their way, it came to me to wonder what I
should do with myself until Jerome might please to seek me again, but
accident favored me with occupation. Passing through the hall I heard
a woman's shrill voice, lifted in anger, berating some unfortunate
attendant.

"You wretched hussy, to speak rudely to a guest of mine, who did but
make to you a pretty speech. I'd have you be most charming to Monsieur
Viard. Remember, you are only a hireling, and need give yourself no
such fine and unseemly airs."

The door just ahead of me was thrown violently open, and out strutted a
tiny lady in a most disproportionate rage. She was beautiful neither
in face nor figure; she was diminutive, and petulant of manner, but
bore herself with an air of almost regal pride. It was she whom I came
to know as Madame du Maine, a daughter of the proud and princely
Condes. Following her, weeping bitterly, came the sweet maid who had
spilled the tray of flowers on me at the door. I stepped back into an
alcove, lest, perchance, she look behind, and aimlessly I straggled out
into the gardens as best I might. The Villa being a strange ground, it
fretted me to be alone therein, with nothing to think of but this
trouble of my friends. And Madame de Chartrain, did I blame her?
Blame Jerome? Yes--no. I hardly knew. Viewed at a distance and
impartially, such things strike us with aversion, and we are quick to
condemn. But the more I thought the nearer I came to concluding it
took something more than a mere mummery to make a wife. All the
ceremonials and benedictions and lighted candles and high-sounding
phrases could not bind a woman's heart, where that heart was free, or
called some other man its lord. Yet the bare fact remained, this woman
was a wife, and to me, at least, that name had always been a sacred and
holy one.

To what vain or wise conclusions my cogitations may have led me, I
conceive not, for another small matter now quite absorbed my whole
attention. It was the beginning of that one dear hope which speedily
banished all others. It is said the trippant tread of Fate doth leave
no print upon the sand to mark its passage, nor doth she sound a note
of warning that the waiting hand may grasp her garments as she flies.

A gleam of white in one of the summer houses caught my roving eye, and
qui