If the drooping _château_ sighed for the absence of the elder victims of the Red Terror, how much more did it miss the youthful Francis, with his tales of the White Knight's daring, with his unconcealed pride in his first adventures under the Enemy of the Commune's leadership, the infectious laughter of Elizabeth Kiss, and best of all the flowering romance of Cecile and Arnold, their 'chance' meetings in darkened corners, their timid whispers, their hidden blushes. Once again was the aged _château_ desolate, the sport of the wind which mockingly howled round its crumbling gables, and of the rain which dripped through its dissolving mortar, percolating into the interior, revivifying the moss; once again the weeds grew bolder in the grounds, already beginning to sprout where the amateur gardeners had stamped them out, and, as they grew, so for the second time the spirit of the _château_ decayed, after having been revived for a brief period by the occupation by the pursued and outlawed nobility. Dank and dismal, the _château_ drooped, cheerless and uninviting--a home for nothing except for rats and mice, which once again invaded its unfortified barriers, burrowing through its rotting wood, and for the owls which snuggled back into their usurped corners. Yet there was one who lived there still, one whose heart was as cold as the draughts, whose spirits were as mournful as the dismal moaning of the wind. His work was finished. The task of the White Knight was ended, and here, where the woman he now cherished had lived, he attempted to forget, to wash from his mind all thoughts of his two Hungarian loves. He was successful in weaning his thoughts from Zita, for Time, the master-healer, had washed his wound of the hurt: she was a lingering memory, a sweet fragrance of yesterday. It was his recollection of Elizabeth which tortured him. She seemed so real, so near, and yet so far away. She was of the immediate present, as real as Zita was just a fairy phantom from some delicious dream. When Geoffrey knew Hungary to be free at last from the tentacles of the Red octopus he realized that his work was ended. No more need to rescue unhappy victims of the Terror, no longer the necessity to counteract the evil purposes of the Communists, to hurry refugees across the border, to assist the Whites in preparing their great _coup d'état_. What more could the world want of him now? Bitterly he answered his own query. Nothing! The world had no use for a vile, scarred, atrocious specimen of humanity such as he. It forgets so easily, and once the world ceased to remember the honour, the glory, of the scars of war, he would remain only a being of disgust, a revolting spectacle, an object of pity.