one hinge
lost in the weeds--a little woebegone gate for intimate friends, that
croaked like a night-bird when it opened, and closed with a whine.
Beyond it lay a narrow path through a rose-garden leading to the
chateau. This rose-garden is the only cultivated patch within the
confines of the wall, for on either side of it tower great trees, their
aged trunks held fast in gnarled thickets of neglected vines. It is only
another "house abandoned," this chateau of Alice's, save that its bygone
splendour asserts itself through the scars, and my own by the marsh
never knew luxury even in its best days.

"Madame is dressing," announced that most faithful of old servitors,
Henri, who before Alice conferred a full-fledged butlership upon him in
his old age was since his youth a stage-carpenter at the Theatre
Francais.

"Will monsieur have the goodness to wait for madame in the library?"
added Henri, as he relieved me of my hat and stick, deposited them
noiselessly upon an oak table, and led me to a portiere of worn Gobelin
which he lifted for me with a bow of the Second Empire.

What a rich old room it is, this silent library of the choleric duke,
with its walls panelled in worm-eaten oak reflecting the firelight and
its rows of volumes too close to the grave to be handled. Here and there
above the high wainscoting are ancestral portraits, some of them as
black as a favourite pipe. Above the great stone chimney-piece is a
full-length figure of the duke in a hunting costume of green velvet. The
candelabra that Henri had just lighted on the long centre-table,
littered with silver souvenirs and the latest Parisian comedies, now
illumined the duke's smile, which he must have held with bad grace
during the sittings. The rest of him was lost in the shadow above the
chimney-piece of sculptured cherubs, whose missing noses have been badly
restored in cement by the gardener.

I had settled myself in a chintz-covered chair and was idly turning the
pages of one of the latest of the Parisian comedies when I heard the
swish of a gown and the patter of two small slippered feet hurrying
across the hall. I rose to regard my hostess with a feeling of tender
curiosity mingled with resentment over her treatment of my old friend,
when the portiere was lifted and Alice came toward me with both white
arms outstretched in welcome. She was so pale in her dinner gown of
black tulle that all the blood seemed to have taken refuge in her
lips--so pal