Mr. Desrolles was a sufferer from some chronic complaint which he alluded to vaguely, and which necessitated frequent recourse to stimulants. ‘The Crown and Sceptre is closed,’ said Jack. ‘I’ve some brandy upstairs; I’ll give you a little.’ ‘That’s uncommonly good-natured of you,’ said Desrolles. ‘I should have a night of agony if I couldn’t get a little brandy somewhere. How late you are!’ ‘I’ve walked further than usual. It was such a fine evening.’ ‘Was it really? Hereabouts it was dull and grey. I thought we were going to have a thunderstorm. Local, I suppose. I’ve got some good news for you.’ ‘Good news for me. The rarity of the thing will make it welcome.’ ‘Your wife’s better, decidedly better. I looked in two hours ago to inquire. The nurse thinks she has taken a turn. Mr. Gerard was here at eight, and thinks the same. It’s wonderful. She rallied in an extraordinary manner between three and five o’clock, took her nourishment with an appearance of appetite for the first time since she has been ill. Mrs. Mason is delighted. Wonderful, isn’t it?’ ‘Very wonderful!’ exclaimed Jack Chicot; and who shall tell the bitterness of heart with which he turned from the shining vision of the future--the vision that had been with him all that evening, back to the dreary reality of the present. He found Mrs. Mason elated. She had never seen a more marked change for the better. ‘She’s as weak as a new-born infant, poor dear,’ she said of her patient, ‘but it’s just as if life was coming gently and slowly back, like the tide coming in over the sands when it has ebbed as low as ever it can ebb.’ The improvement continued steadily from that hour. The brain, so long clouded, awakened as from sleep. Zaïre recovered her strength, her senses, her beauty, her insolence and audacity. Before September she was the old ‘Chicot;’ the woman whose portrait had flaunted on all the walls of London. Mr. Smolendo was in raptures. The broken leg was as sound as ever it had been. La Chicot would be able to dance early in November. A paragraph announcing this fact had already gone the round of the papers. Another paragraph, more familiar in tone, informed the town that Madame Chicot’s beauty had gained new lustre during the enforced retirement of her long illness. Mr. Smolendo knew his public. CHAPTER IX. ‘AND ART THOU COME! AND ART THOU TRUE!’ It was late in November, and the trees were bare in the grounds of Hazlehurst Manor. The grand old mansion wore its air of grave dignity, under the dull grey skies of late autumn, but the charms and graces of summer had gone, and there was a shade of melancholy in the stillness of the house and garden, and that pleasant enclosure, too big for a meadow, and too small for a park, over which the rooks swept like a black cloud at evensong, going screaming home to their nests in the tall elms behind the house.