e, and in that moment
decided to keep her promise and meet him at a secluded point on the
river-bank at sunset after supper?

CHAPTER VII. JEAN JACQUES AWAKES FROM SLEEP

The pensiveness of a summer evening on the Beau Cheval was like a veil
hung over all the world. While yet the sun was shining, there was the
tremor of life in the sadness; but when the last glint of amethyst and
gold died away behind Mont Violet, and the melancholy swish of the river
against the osiered banks rose out of the windless dusk, all the region
around Manor Cartier, with its cypresses, its firs, its beeches, and its
elms, became gently triste. Even the weather-vane on the Manor--the gold
Cock of Beaugard, as it was called--did not move; and the stamping of
a horse in the stable was like the thunderous knock of a traveller
from Beyond. The white mill and the grey manor stood out with ghostly
vividness in the light of the rising moon. Yet there were times
innumerable when they looked like cool retreats for those who wanted
rest; when, in the summer solstice, they offered the pleasant peace of
the happy fireside. How often had Jean Jacques stood off from it all of
a summer night and said to himself: "Look at that, my Jean Jacques. It
is all yours, Manor and mills and farms and factory--all."

"Growing, growing, fattening, while I drone in my feather bed," he had
as often said, with the delighted observation of the philosopher. "And
me but a young man yet--but a mere boy," he would add. "I have piled
it up--I have piled it up, and it keeps on growing, first one thing and
then another."

Could such a man be unhappy? Finding within himself his satisfaction,
his fountain of appeasement, why should not his days be days of
pleasantness and peace? So it appeared to him during that summer, just
passed, when he had surveyed the World and his world within the World,
and it seemed to his innocent mind that he himself had made it all.
There he was, not far beyond forty, and eligible to become a member of
Parliament, or even a count of the Holy Roman Empire! He had thought of
both these honours, but there was so much to occupy him--he never had
a moment to himself, except at night; and then there was planning
and accounting to do, his foremen to see, or some knotty thing to
disentangle. But when the big clock in the Manor struck ten, and he took
out his great antique silver watch, to see if the two marched to the
second, he would go to the door, lo