But it is a long lane which has no turning; Margaret's turned very suddenly, and ushered her into a fairy land, whose ghost lights dazzled her eyes; whose strange, wild, awful beauty filled her soul with eternal sunshine. Thus it fell out. CHAPTER XXIV. SELLING A SECRET. On a sunny day in January, a traveling coach crunched up the drive to Castle Brand, and produced a visitor for Miss Walsingham. The Waaste, so broad and rolling, looked well in its garb of snow, in which the late New Year had wed it; and along the drive the phinny firs and silver holly-bushes were piled with molded purity, while every creamy nymph in stone or stucco wore a crown of brightness. The turrets even of the hoary castle were fringed with diamond stalactites, from which dropped liquid pearls upon the deep green ivy; and the griffins at the door each upheld a cone of dazzling snow upon his old stone forehead. The visitor glanced about with many a smirk of approbation, and some wise shrugs of the shoulder; but said nothing aloud, preserving his breath for more important speech. Margaret was sitting listlessly over her needle-work when the footman brought her a card, upon which was discernible, amid flourishes of the wildest fantasy, "_Ludovic, Chevalier de Calembours_." She started up with a wild flush mantling her cheek, and a smothered cry of wrath. The elegant little gentleman clad in the Hungarian velvet costume, beribboned, bejeweled, flaunting with many a badge of mystic significance, got upon his crooked little legs, and held out his white hands dramatically to the flashing, palpitating, queen-like creature who swept through the great drawing-room to greet him for the first time. "Chevalier de Calembours! accomplice of Roland Mortlake, I have heard of you before!" she panted, not deigning to touch him. "Mademoiselle Walsingham, champion of Colonel Brand, all the world has heard of you before!" rasped the bland-faced Hun. "Why have you come here, heartless man!" cried Margaret. "To see the dear mademoiselle whose actions so wise, so unselfish, so _heroique_, have won my heart?" "Am I to accept praise from the enemy of St. Udo Brand? Never! You murdered him among you!" "Softly, my heroine! The chevalier was not on the field when the admirable colonel was stabbed! _Ma foi!_ he was lying bleeding on his litter amid his Southern friends, who had captured him for the second time. The first, the dear mademoiselle knows, the chance of fortune wooed me to the South; but the second, _mon Dieu!_ no one asked me my will, but they hacked and hewed over my shackled body, and then the South won me from my captors." "Sir, I desire to hear nothing of your history. You were paid by the murderer to dog the steps of St. Udo Brand; you were both leagued against him. Had he ever harmed you, chevalier? Was he not too brave to fall by treachery?"