"The little vixen," he said to himself, changing his pose against the great olive for one yet more graceful, "the small fury! A little more and she would have bitten her lip through. I saw the tremble of the under one where the teeth were biting into it, when she was holding herself in. But I like her none the worse for that. Women are the poorest sort of wild cattle--unless you have to tame them!" The night darkened down. The primrose of the sky changed to the saffron red of a mountain-gipsy's handkerchief, crimsoned to a deep welter of incarnadine, the "flurry" of the dying day. Still Raphael stood there, by the black pool. A little bluish glimmer, which might have been Will-o'-the-wisp, danced across the marisma. The trees sighed. The water muttered to itself. In that place and time, simple shepherd-folk who had often seen Raphael, Lord of Collioure, pass into the haunted coppice, were entirely sure of the explanation. The devil spoke with him--else, why was he not afraid? They were right. For Raphael Llorient took counsel there with his own heart. And as that was evil, it amounted to the same thing. The Kingdom of God is within you, saith the Word. The other kingdom also, according to your choice. CHAPTER XXVI. FIRST COUNCIL OF WAR There was more than one council of war within the bounds of the circle of hills that closed in little Collioure that night. First, that which was held within the kitchen-place of La Masane. The maids were busied with the cattle, but all three brothers were there. The Señora, sloe-eyed and vivid, continually interrupted, now by spoken word, now trotting to the steaming _casseroles_ upon the fire, anon darting to the door to make sure that this time no unwelcome visitor should steal upon them at unawares. When Claire had told her story, the three men sat grave and silent, each deep in his own thoughts. Only the Señora was voluble in her astonishment. She thought she knew her foster-child. "He had, indeed, ever the grasping hand," she said, "therefore I had thought he would have married lands wide and rich with some dwarfish bride, or else a merchant's daughter of Barcelona, whose Peruvian dollars needed the gilding of his nobility. But Claire--and she is his cousin too----!" "Also no Catholic--nor ever will be!" interrupted Claire hotly. The old lady sighed. This was a sore subject with her. Had she not spent three reals every week in candles at the shrine of the Virgin in the Church of Collioure, sending down the money by one of her maidens, all to give effect to her prayers for the conversion of her guest? For Donna Amélie believed, as every Spanish woman does in her heart believe, that out of the fold of the Church is no salvation. "Ah, well," she murmured on this occasion, "that was your father's teaching--on him be the sin." For dying unconfessed, as Francis Agnew had done, she thought a little more would not matter.