And Raymonde de Guéfontaine, a Catholic, was transported in mind from the bench in Hyde Park to the little church of her faith in Guernsey, where every day she went to pray for André's soul. It was unfamiliar to her, and she always found it stiff and new-looking, with its pews and whitewash and self-complacent plaster saints. The feet of her spirit faltered now upon its threshold. No, better far to be in that little old pinnacled chapel in Finistère where she and André had knelt as children, a marvel of delicate and lovely tracery, set away from mortal haunts in a world of shining chestnut trees--the little chapel where woodland beasts and grotesques chased each other about the intricate carving of the ancient painted screen; where St. Christopher, uncouth and truly gigantic, looked across at St. Roch, whose dog no longer possessed tail or ears; where the floor was worn by generations of use, and the pillars green with damp. There, before the rude wooden Pietà, wrought centuries ago with much love if with little skill, she could have prayed indeed to the Mother who knew, if ever woman did, what loss meant. . . . And there, in spirit, she did so pray, while her bodily eyes, long exiled from that shrine, watched the fans of the alien horse-chestnuts flutter to the ground about her. (2) The Vicomtesse de Nantillac was stout, she wheezed when she spoke, and was sometimes besprinkled with snuff; but she had been a beauty at the court of Louis XV., and did not forget it. "You know, child," she said that evening, as they awaited a guest in her comfortable drawing-room, which faced the fields towards Westminster, "it really is time that you were rangée. You have been in that barbarous island since the spring, and Henri might well part with you now. What further do you propose to do there--or he with you?" "I may find means of making myself useful," said her niece placidly. Having not the slightest intention of yielding to these attacks, she was not disturbed by their recurrence. "You know," went on the old lady, shaking her elaborate grey curls, "M. de Pontferrand thinks----" "But it is nothing to me what M. de Pontferrand thinks!" interrupted Mme. de Guéfontaine with vigour. Mme. de Nantillac turned up her eyes to heaven, then addressed a much more mundane deity, her lapdog. "Cupidon, you hear!" she wheezed. "And as for that time in Brittany with poor André . . . Tell me, Raymonde, what did you wear there? Did you really go about with pistols and a cartridge belt? I said something about it to M. le Duc, and though of course he thought it was most unfitting, he vowed you must have looked like Minerva or la Grande Mademoiselle." Mme. de Guéfontaine gave a laugh. Out of deference to her aunt's wishes, she was not wearing deep mourning this evening, and the full grey silk and abundant fichu from which her neck rose like an ivory column had about them nothing of the Amazon.