Marguerite was still wholly unchanged. “A smiling moonglade,” Salvières once paraphrased, gazing at her as she stood with her arm about Piotr’s neck on the wide balcony of the _Salle des Chevaliers_, watching the stars appear one by one in the ultramarine sky above the rocking waters of the Channel. Slim and extraordinarily girlish in her white frock, she made a lovely silhouette against the blue infinite, and her clear laugh at some remark of the little boy’s held no rift of disappointment or sadness. That she had suffered, and suffered deeply, was no longer a secret to Salvières or Tatiana, and scarcely so even to Régis the optimist, but no allusion from any of them had ever disturbed her quietude and admirable self-control. It goes without saying that she had not been told about Laurence’s escapades. The death of Captain Moray had been discreetly announced as due to an accident, the separation of Basil from his wife as a mere temporary convenience, since Laurence’s dislike of long travels had prevented her from accompanying her husband to Mongolia; but when Piotr arrived with his aunt and uncle at Salvières, her good sense had told her that there must be something that was purposely being kept from her. Indeed, the little chap had at once explained to her that “mamma” had left Tverna all of a sudden without “papa,” and that “papa”--but this she at first did not believe--had gone away afterward, “very angry and frowning awfully, without kissing him, Piotr.” But when challenged by that precocious infant to ask the faithful Garrassime if this was not the exact truth, she had forborne to do so, warned by something in the old man’s attitude that he would not speak to her about the matter, and by her own feelings that it was better for her, in any case, to remain in ignorance of the real state of affairs. All this grew to be extremely unreassuring, but the “Gamin’s” courage was not of a common order. As a matter of fact it might, without the least exaggeration, have been called Spartan, for her smile was never shadowy, her bearing never languid, and soon she was the very soul of the old castle by the sea, as she had always been that of Plenhöel. So did the days at Salvières slip like bright beads from a many-colored necklace; one by one, diversified by excursions, rides, drives to the old abbeys and shrines with which that province of France is dotted, picnics in the forest or on the caverned shore, sails on the amusingly choppy water, and chases after elusive crawfish by lantern-light up the course of the cool little river that flows across the immense estate. Piotr seemed to have lost his regrettable propensity for sudden fits of fury, and was the happiest little creature on earth. Jean and Tatiana, cheered by Régis’s unfailing good-temper and rose-colored way of looking at things--especially as they felt certain that Basil had so far heard nothing of the latest developments--breathed more easily.