“_Cette pie-grièche le rend assomant!_” he pondered, which may be approximately Englished as “That sour-minded magpie is transforming him into a regular bore”--and wouldn’t Laurence have loved “Antinoüs” for this interpretation of her influence over his favorite cousin! but, ignorant of the curious inside workings of this family dissension, she rejoiced at her cleverness in estranging them from one another, little guessing what it would result in ultimately. “Leave well enough alone” is a sentence she might have called to mind with infinite profit to herself, but, unfortunately, her narrow, plotting little brain had no room for that thought for the morrow which often results so conveniently in the fruition of time. CHAPTER IX The door was shut, and cobwebbed too. Across the dusty panels grew Thick tendrils of Regret and Pain, When Love unbarred, and glancing through, Smiled sadly once, then closed it to, And footfalls died away again. It was a wonderful morning, all aglow with sunbeams as yet unchequered by shadows, for the trees of the Bois and the Champs-Élysées were but just beginning to star their naked branches with gauze-like shreds of tiniest leaf. Even the famous “Marronier-du-vingt-Mars” had scarcely disenveloped its fan-shaped foliage, and its burgeons for the most part still glistened in their smart brown rubber corselets. The sky was blue as forget-me-nots, and some venturesome white butterflies flitted by on gossamer wings as Basil turned his horses’ noses toward the left bank of the Seine, after some hours spent in the Bois de Vincennes, alone, as it were, with awakening Nature. “I shall go and see how they are,” he mused, flicking a disgracefully inexperienced baby fly from his off leader’s ear with the end of his long four-in-hand whip. “Surely there can be no harm in that, I trust!” He smiled a little bitterly, and, gathering the ribbons more firmly into his hands, slowed down to take a difficult turning with his customary skill. The river glittered bravely as he crossed the bridge, clothing itself all over with steel and silver when a fleecy little flock of cloudlets that had followed him from the “Arc-de-Triomphe” interposed their diaphanousness between him and the sun; but as soon as they had sailed on resuming its gallant armor of golden scales again; and when at last he reached the Noble Faubourg he found that the clouds had let themselves be distanced and that Spring reigned supreme. Topping the garden walls of the Hôtel de Plenhöel the dainty trails of centenarian ivies were overtoned by the first shoots of snugly protected climbing rose-vines, that formed a triumphant garland of crimson-tipped green along the ancient granite coping. With a curious beating of the heart Basil drove into the stone-paved courtyard and stopped his beautiful team of bays at the foot of the steps.