“Oh, no,” said my friend. “He will be here in a few days. He always spends the month of November here. He comes before All Saints’ Day, on account of my daughter.” “Of your daughter?” The steward looked at me in some surprise. “Did you not know that he married my daughter, and that we have lost her?” There was no ostentation in the reminder, only a deep sadness. I told him of my visit to the graveyard. “Could you find her grave? It is hidden among the others.” “Yes, only an ivy covered stone. But there is so much of youth in the inscription that it goes to the heart.” “My wife would have liked a different monument. But it is enough.” The cloister surrounding the chateau, with the purity of its arches, over which vines and clematis clambered at will, was a joy to see. “It is all that remains of the ancient nunnery,” my guide explained. “The nunnery was abandoned in the seventeenth century for another religious house, larger and more severe, that of Saint Hugo, and the family of the Count d’Alligny took possession. The present Count sold the estate to M. Cernay. I had been steward in his day. He lost all his money at the gaming table; he cared for nothing so much as play. He was an excellent man.” “What has become of him?” “He is in command of the four soldiers of the Prince of Monaco, and having not a sou to lose he looks on while other men ruin themselves. The occupation diverts him. And yet I had administered his estate well. But he cared nothing for the land. No one cares for the land any more.” “Not you?” “Oh, I! I have walked these woods so long that I know every tree of them. I used to walk here so much with my daughter when she was a little girl.” The memory of his daughter visibly obsessed him. Was it that he wished to remind me of her brilliant marriage? Hardly: because he seemed, as I have said, so utterly free from snobbery. We found ourselves in the dwelling rooms, and he pointed to a portrait. “When she used to run the country with me she was not so pale and thin.” I recognised her pallor, a bloodlessness which the artist’s palette had not flattered. In the sumptuous ball dress in which she was tricked out her bare arms and shoulders seemed to embarrass her. One felt that they were cold, and almost looked to see the goose flesh. To this impression of discomfort the eyes added an impression of timidity, almost of fear. For a moment I thought that it was a sort of ecstasy which held her thus rigid--had I indeed not seen her almost shivering, listening to the air from Amadis? Examining the portrait more closely I attributed the expression to fear--excessive modesty or secret wretchedness, a mystery now unfathomable, one which the artist had either penetrated or unconsciously revealed. She reminded one of those portraits of Spanish Infantas whose youth seems stifled by etiquette and tight lacing. Presently I discovered another resemblance. By way of showing some degree of sympathy, I asked: