in
particular had made himself an unmistakable figure in the track of this
girl as she went to church. He was a short, prosperous-looking man,
whose long, bushy black beard and clumsy black umbrella made him seem
both shorter and older than he really was; but whose big, bold eyes, and
step that spurned the ground, gave him an instant character of youth.

His name was Camille Bert, and he was a commercial traveller who had
only been in the island an idle week before he began to hover in the
tracks of Madeleine Durand. Since everyone knows everyone in so small
a place, Madeleine certainly knew him to speak to; but it is not very
evident that she ever spoke. He haunted her, however; especially at
church, which was, indeed, one of the few certain places for finding
her. In her home she had a habit of being invisible, sometimes through
insatiable domesticity, sometimes through an equally insatiable
solitude. M. Bert did not give the impression of a pious man, though he
did give, especially with his eyes, the impression of an honest one. But
he went to Mass with a simple exactitude that could not be mistaken for
a pose, or even for a vulgar fascination. It was perhaps this religious
regularity which eventually drew Madeleine into recognition of him. At
least it is certain that she twice spoke to him with her square and open
smile in the porch of the church; and there was human nature enough in
the hamlet to turn even that into gossip.

But the real interest arose suddenly as a squall arises with the
extraordinary affair that occurred about five days after. There was
about a third of a mile beyond the village of Haroc a large but lonely
hotel upon the London or Paris model, but commonly almost entirely
empty. Among the accidental group of guests who had come to it at this
season was a man whose nationality no one could fix and who bore the
non-committal name of Count Gregory. He treated everybody with complete
civility and almost in complete silence. On the few occasions when he
spoke, he spoke either French, English, or once (to the priest) Latin;
and the general opinion was that he spoke them all wrong. He was a
large, lean man, with the stoop of an aged eagle, and even the eagle's
nose to complete it; he had old-fashioned military whiskers and
moustache dyed with a garish and highly incredible yellow. He had the
dress of a showy gentleman and the manners of a decayed gentleman; he
seemed (as with a sort of simplicity) to