Marguerite had devoted herself to the amusement of Piotr; a difficult Piotr to-day, rendered peevish by his disturbed night’s rest, impossible to please, restive as the unbroken colt he was. At last she came down, very pale in her white dinner-dress, and a trifle ghostly as she glided along the inner gallery to the glassed-in terrace where all were waiting. “Moonglade?” yes, but a very faint presentment of her usual “crystal and silver” self, to quote Tatiana. Her father, who had been pacing restlessly up and down between the two arched, creeper-garlanded entrances of this sublimized conservatory, went forward and threw his arm about her shoulders. He said nothing, but suddenly bent his tall form and kissed her above the eyebrow, his eyes full of pity as he noticed the small hands, gloved to the elbow, so as to hide the thin bandages beneath. She had been cruelly torn by that rusty cable in sliding down the cliff, and he was far from reassured. Everybody spoke to her that night, and for days to follow, in a tender, careful manner, as though afraid to touch upon too sensitive a point, of hurting her in some way; and it was in an almost hesitating tone that Tatiana asked her just then whether she felt able to take her place for an hour or so, later on, while she herself went down with the doctors, Jean, the abbé, and Régis, to be present at their examination of the wounded man. “Why, of course, ‘Aunt’ Tatiana!” she replied, smiling nearly as usual. “I’ll be only too glad to be of use.” Tatiana glanced curiously at her. “Of use? What was the ‘Gamin’ ever else but useful to all those she loved, and to many others besides?” CHAPTER XVIII Sweet Ligia sang, and as I passed I was not fettered to the mast. By the blinding light of two hurricane-lamps the eminent surgeons were bending over their patient. Deftly, gently, rapidly they turned and touched him here and there, their inscrutable, clean-shaven, clever faces close together, directing by an occasional short word the Salvières doctor, who was proudly serving as assistant to these great men. Beyond the brilliant circle of light stood Tatiana, turning her wedding-ring round and round her finger, her eyes fixed upon it as if her life depended upon the exactness of its fit. Jean, Régis, and the abbé had retreated to the recess, where the round windows shone back at them like mirrors. The setting down of a stethoscope or of a measuring-tape in its little metal wheel upon the deal table near the bed, made the nerves of every person present thrill. The minutes dragged like weary hours, and the silky sound of the rain falling from the slate roof to the paving of the narrow-walled inclosure about the station was distinctly exasperating. “Can he hear--understand?” Tatiana whispered to her private physician as he crossed before her to get something from a side-shelf.