which she
had planned on the Antoine, and making a good wife to the man who was to
solve all her problems for her, prevailed. She did not at first miss
so much the life of excitement, of danger, of intrigue, of romance, of
colour and variety, which she had left behind in Spain. When her child
was born, she became passionately fond of it; her maternal spirit
smothered it. It gave the needed excitement in the routine of life at
St. Saviour's.

Yet the interest was not permanent. There came a time when she resented
the fact that Jean Jacques made more of the child than he did of
herself. That was a bad day for all concerned, for dissimulation
presently became necessary, and the home of Jean Jacques was a home of
mystery which no philosophy could interpret. There had never been but
the one child. She was not less handsome than when Jean Jacques married
her and brought her home, though the bloom of maiden youthfulness was no
longer there; and she certainly was a cut far above the habitant women
or even the others of a higher social class, in a circle which had an
area equal to a principality in Europe.

The old cure, M. Langon, had had much influence over her, for few could
resist the amazing personal influence which his rare pure soul secured
over the worst. It was a sad day to her when he went to his long home;
and inwardly she felt a greater loss than she had ever felt, save that
once when her Carvillho Gonzales went the way of the traitor. Memories
of her past life far behind in Madrid did not grow fainter; indeed, they
grew more distinct as the years went on. They seemed to vivify, as her
discontent and restlessness grew.

Once, when there had come to St. Saviour's a middle-aged baron from
Paris who had heard the fishing was good at St. Saviour's, and talked to
her of Madrid and Barcelona, of Cordova and Toledo, as one who had seen
and known and (he declared) loved them; who painted for her in splashing
impressionist pictures the life that still eddied in the plazas and
dreamed in the patios, she had been almost carried off her feet with
longing; and she nearly gave that longing an expression which would have
brought a tragedy, while still her Zoe was only eight years old. But M.
Langon, the wise priest whose eyes saw and whose heart understood, had
intervened in time; and she never knew that the sudden disappearance of
the Baron, who still owed fifty dollars to Jean Jacques, was due to the
practical wisdom of a gre