A sound of wheels on the gravel--the carriage was gone. On the box was a wondrous array of parcels. Clovis and Aglae were engaged in so animated a discussion that the children on the front seat crowed and clapped hands with glee, marking the gesticulations of papa and the dear, funny, brown woman. Their elfin laughter reverberated among the grim pinnacles and turrets, and as the carriage turned into a woody glade, Gabrielle saw from her seat in the moat-garden little Camille climb upon the woman's knee and press her rosy face against the brown one. The action smote the marquise as with a knife-stab, and she moaned as if in bodily pain. "She usurps my place completely," murmured the hapless lady, deadly pale. "I am as little a mother as a wife. Oh, God grant me strength to endure! Though I be without the gate, teach me to be thankful that they are happy." She was aware of a long shadow on the grass, and a gentle voice by her side echoed her own thought. "Alone--always alone," the suave abbe said, scrutinizing with lazy satisfaction the delicacy and whiteness of his hands. "How is it, dear marquise, that you only of our coterie are heavy-hearted? You need rousing. What will you gain by moping except a loss of beauty and a bad digestion? They've gone off to Montbazon, Clovis and his affinity and the babes--twittering like so many sparrows. I should like to survey the scene there, it will be most entertainingly ridiculous, but they won't let us miserable scoffers assist at the incantation. Our presence would annul the charm. What a divine day!" he continued, flinging himself on the grass in a graceful attitude at the feet of the chatelaine. "How swiftly the seasons pass! These glorious summer days! How we enjoy the sun although we seek the shade, apparently ungrateful. We forget that the leaves will turn sallow and swirl down and die, and that we shall pine for warmth in vain. Why not? Why trouble about the future when the present is brimming with delight?" The abbe, his hands clasped behind his head, was peering straight up into the blue, and what he saw there must have been pleasing, for he seemed as satisfied with everything in general as the cat that purrs before the fire. "Why so dismal, my dear Gabrielle, on so perfect a morning as this; it savours of ingratitude to heaven?" Gabrielle glanced down at him. Was he playing with her in malice, as the cat does with the mouse? Dismal, forsooth, when your heart overflows with misery! Pharamond was in a retrospective mood, and dreamily surveyed the past as he might some moving panorama. "Let me see," he said. "How long have we dwelt here a model family? A year and a half--rather more than a year and a half." "Only that?" sighed Gabrielle. "It seems a lifetime." "You are discontented? Yearn for the frippery of court life? I am not surprised. It is horribly selfish of us all to lock up such peerless beauty as yours to gloat over among ourselves."