h to escape to
England?" he inquired with a courteous gesture.

"The only son," replied the new-comer.

"I am honoured to make the acquaintance of Monsieur le Marquis," said
Antoine Sebastian slowly.

"Oh, you must not call me that," replied D'Arragon with a short laugh.
"I am an English sailor--that is all."

"And now, my dear Louis, I leave you," broke in Charles, who had rather
impatiently awaited the end of these formalities. "A brief half-hour and
I am with you again. You will stay here till I return."

He turned, nodded gaily to Desiree and ran downstairs.

Through the open windows they heard his quick, light footfall as he
hurried up the Frauengasse. Something made them silent, listening to it.

It was not difficult to see that D'Arragon was a sailor. Not only had he
the brown face of those who live in the open, but he had the attentive
air of one whose waking moments are a watch.

"You look at one as if one were the horizon," Desiree said to him
long afterwards. But it was at this moment in the drawing-room in the
Frauengasse that the comparison formed itself in her mind.

His face was rather narrow, with a square chin and straight lips. He was
not quick in speech like Charles, but seemed to think before he spoke,
with the result that he often appeared to be about to say something, and
was interrupted before the words had been uttered.

"Unless my memory is a bad one, your mother was an Englishwoman,
monsieur," said Sebastian, "which would account for your being in the
English service."

"Not entirely," answered d'Arragon, "though my mother was indeed English
and died--in a French prison. But it was from a sense of gratitude that
my father placed me in the English service--and I have never regretted
it, monsieur."

"Your father received kindnesses at English hands, after his escape,
like many others."

"Yes, and he was too old to repay them by doing the country any service
himself. He would have done it if he could--"

D'Arragon paused, looking steadily at the tall old man who listened to
him with averted eyes.

"My father was one of those," he said at length, "who did not think that
in fighting for Bonaparte one was necessarily fighting for France."

Sebastian held up a warning hand.

"In England--" he corrected, "in England one may think such things. But
not in France, and still less in Dantzig."

"If one is an Englishman," replied D'Arragon with a smile, "one may
think them where one li