“Apropos of the house, that brings me to another point,” said she. “The County feels very strongly that I ought to put the house in repair—that dear old wonderful, rambling, crumbling house. They take it as the final crushing evidence of my depravity, that I prefer to leave it in its present condition of picturesque decay. I’m sure you agree with me, that it would be high treason to allow a carpenter or mason to lay a hand on it. By-the-bye, I hope you have no conscientious scruples against speaking French; for Madame Dornaye only knows two words of English, and those she mispronounces. There she is—yes, that little black and grey thing, in the frock. She’s come to meet me, because we had a bet. You owe me five shillings,” she called out to Madame Dornaye, as Will helped her from the carriage. “You see, I’ve brought him.” Madame Dornaye, who had a pair of humorous old French eyes, responded, blinking them, “Oh, before I pay you, I shall have to be convinced that it is really he.” “I’m afraid it’s really he,” laughed Will; “but rather than let so immaterial a detail cost you five shillings, I’m prepared to maintain with my dying breath that there’s no such person.” “Don’t mind him,” interposed Johannah. “He’s trying to flatter you up, because he wants you to call him Jean mon fils, as if his name weren’t common William.” Then, to him, “Go,” she said, with an imperious gesture, “go and find a vehicle with a good tired horse.” And when the vehicle with the good tired horse had brought them to their destination, and they stood before the hall-door of Silver Towers, Johannah looked up at the escutcheon carved in the pale-grey stone above it, and said pensively, “On a field argent, a heart gules, crowned with an imperial crown or; and the motto, ’Qu’il régne!’ If, when you got my first letter, Cousin Will, if you’d remembered the arms of our family, and the motto—if you had ’let it reign’—I should have been spared the trouble and expense of a journey to town to-day.” “But I should have missed a precious experience,” said he. “You forget what I couldn’t help being supremely conscious of—that I bear those arms with a difference. I hope, though, that you won’t begrudge the journey to town. I think there are certain aspects of your character that I might never have discovered if I’d met you in any other way.” That evening Johannah wrote a letter: “Dear Mr. Burrell,—Ce que femme veut, Dieu le veut. The first part of my rash little prophecy has already come true. Will Stretton is staying in this house, a contented guest. At the present moment he’s hovering about the piano, where Madame Dornaye is playing Chopin; and he’s just remarked that he never hears Chopin without thinking of those lines of Browning’s: ’I discern Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn.’