"FitzJesse says the title is right enough. One of his father's ancestors came to the South of Ireland after the revocation of something--a treaty at Nancy--I think he said. He belonged to an old Huguenot family--those people who were massacred in the opera, don't you know--and the title had been allowed to go dead--till this man married a tremendously rich Sheffield cutler's daughter, and bought the old estate in Provence, and got himself enrolled in the French peerage. Romantic, isn't it?" "Very. What became of the Sheffield cutler's daughter?" "She drank herself to death two years after her marriage. FitzJesse says they both lived upon brandy, but she hadn't been educated up to it, and it killed her." "A curious kind of man for Mrs. Tregonell to invite here. Not quite good style." "Perhaps not--but he's very amusing." Leonard spent half an hour with his son. The child had escaped from babyhood in the year that had gone. He was now a bright sentient creature, eager to express his thoughts--to gather knowledge--an active, vivacious being, full of health and energy. Whatever duties Christabel had neglected during her husband's absence, the boy had, at least, suffered no neglect. Never had childhood developed under happier conditions. The father could find no fault in the nursery, though there was a vague feeling in his mind that everything was wrong at Mount Royal. "Why the deuce did she fill the house with people while I was away," he muttered to himself, in the solitude of his dressing-room, where his clothes had been put ready for him, and candles lighted by his Swiss valet. The dressing-room was at that end of the corridor most remote from Christabel's apartments. It communicated with the room Leonard had slept in during his boyhood--and that opened again into his gun-room. The fact that these rooms had been prepared for him told him plainly enough that he and his wife were henceforth to lead divided lives. The event of last October, his year of absence, had built up a wall between them which he, for the time being at least, felt himself powerless to knock down. "Can she suspect--can she know"--he asked himself, pausing in his dressing to stand staring at the fire, with moody brow and troubled eyes. "No, that's hardly possible. And yet her whole manner is changed. She holds me at a distance. Every look, every tone just now was a defiance. Of course I know that she loved that man--loved him first--last--always; never caring a straw for me. She was too careful of herself--had been brought up too well to go wrong, like other women--but she loved him. I would never have brought him inside these doors if I had not known that she could take care of herself. I tested and tried her to the uttermost--and--well--I took my change out of him."