Ermengarde, uplifted, tranquillized, yet full of unrest and a sort of compunction mingled with longing, was like a wondering child at some solemn rite, dimly guessed at through the faces of those present. She lost herself completely in watching the moving drama of flushed sky and sea. What pure, pale-green spaces above the sun-glow, what lakes of rose, purple, violet, and orange! the whole spectrum broken up and scattered, while the deep peacock blue of the Eastern sea grew deeper than ever. The sunlight lying so lovingly on vine and olive-covered steep, turning blue gloom of pines to glowing velvet, and calling out all the warmer tints in the mysterious grey-green of olives, slanted more and more till every wood and cultivated patch and building on gorge and flank facing the light, had its true colour, flushed, darkened, and faded. Night was gathering in vales and clefts, and stealing up the great shoulder of _Mont Agel_, dark upon the west; the eastern peaks were crimson jewels paling to palest claret. Ermengarde was absorbed in the silent symphony of melting and mingling colour to that degree she scarcely seemed to breathe, when voices jarred suddenly into the stillness from beneath her feet, where the mule-path ran unseen under the rocky steep. With the voices came the soft patter of asses' feet, and the firm step of a man, light laughter, and then a single voice, cheerful, masculine, English. "Not going to play to-night? Come now," it remonstrated. "When I have tell you I am broke to stone," returned a reproachful, metallic treble. "And my next last _parure_ of diamonds is what you call pop for a nozzing. I will no more gif my fine jewels to ze Shoos for two sous. Also I haf lend from a friend hundred louis zat I lose last night." They stopped where the path broadened on a rocky jut, their party having gone in at the hotel gates higher up. Ermengarde could hear the donkey improving the occasion by a vigorous cropping of tough herbage. She was sure the woman was painted, and fancied that the odour of musk floated up. "All the more bound to play, Countess," the genial baritone replied. "You're bound to rake 'em in somehow, don't you know. How else get the things back? Let me lend you----" "No, no, _mon cher_. I rob not the poors. Not you, my poor child, who are poor like ze mouse at Mass--you say." A cheery laugh rang out. "Not now," the gay voice cried. "Bless you, dear Countess, I've got a system now, and I raked 'em in for all I was worth last night. I'm simply swimming in gold and notes. Don't know what to do with 'em. Thought the banker would have gone for me." "Ah, ze banker enraged himself? Good." Then, in a changed voice, in which the note of greed was audible: "How much louis have you win, _mon bon ami_? No, I rob not. Ach! all the world is come behind. Make but this donkey to march, Monsieur."