But suddenly, no one knew why, the female heart being many stringed and unaccountable, even to me, Rhoda Polly was crying--yes, Rhoda Polly the dry-eyed, and who but Alida was comforting her under the stupid gaze of hangers-on about the station of Aramon! CHAPTER XXIII THE MISGIVINGS OF ALIDA At the house in the garden the new servants stood ready, neat and smiling. My father had written to a Protestant pastor at Grenoble to send him two maids of his religion. Accordingly two sisters had arrived, Claire and Hermance Tessier, reliable pleasant-faced girls with no family ties in Aramon and with the difference of religion to keep them apart from indiscriminate gossipry. The wing of the house where they were to sleep had formed a part of the wall, possibly even it may have been an ancient gateway in the time of the Montmorencies. My father had joined it to the main building by a flying bridge of iron roofed with zinc--which was Dennis Deventer's own private contribution to Garden Cottage. I had warned him of the nocturnal habits of Linn and her husband, and he agreed with me that while for Alida's sake they must be served according to the French fashion, they need not be deprived of the nightly freedom of their own house which was their greatest luxury. So at the Cottage door we judged it best to leave them. Rhoda Polly and her mother drove home. My father and I withdrew, I to my den, he to his study. If the new tenants of the Garden Cottage had any changes to make or any fault to find with what had been prepared for them, the alterations could be done quietly and by degrees. Besides, the pale face of Alida haunted me and I thought that a night's rest would be for her the surest medicine. But the general joyousness of the journey up the hill was our best hope that all would be well. The Bey was gay. Even Linn relaxed when she saw the noble prospect of the blue Rhone and the little white and green house among the laurels, walled in like a fortress. Hand in hand but silent Rhoda Polly sat beside Alida as the coachman drove over the bridge and up the winding road, St. Andre looming up a crenellated wall of red and gold above them. This was the beginning of a wonderful week which, lived in the unseen and unsuspected shadow of disaster, now shines the brighter for the contrast with what was to come after. The last week of the theatres and baths of Pompeii was not more memorable, and we who sunned ourselves upon the limestone slopes of Mont St. Andre thought as little of the future as the many tinted crowd of merry-makers who thronged the beaches between the city gate and the white sands of Torre del Greco. They came on the 11th of March, and one week after fell the 18th, a date ever memorable in the history of the cities of France. Yet how much happiness did we manage to put in between the one day and the other.