“So what? It is evident you want me to pay you compliments. I am determined to go. If I must not accompany you, I will hire a private mule of my own with a side-saddle. Why should not I do the cure de petit lait too?” “Ah, because you don’t want it.” “Is that a reason to be given seriously to a British tourist? It is the very thing to make me go.” “Everard, you laugh; I wish I could laugh too,” said Reine. “Probably Herbert would get better the sooner. I feel so heavy--so serious--not like other girls.” “You were neither heavy nor serious in the old times,” said Everard, looking down upon her with a stirring of fondness which was not love, in his heart, “when you used to be scolded for being so French. Did you ever dine solemnly in the old hall since you grew up, Reine? It is very odd. I could not help looking up to the gallery, and hearing the old scuffle in the corner, and wondering what you thought to see me sitting splendid with the aunts at table. It was very bewildering. I felt like two people, one sitting grown-up down below, the other whispering up in the corner with Reine and Bertie, looking on and thinking it something grand and awful. I shall go there and look at you when we are all at home again. You have never been at Whiteladies since you were grown up, Reine?” “No,” she said, turning her face to him with a soft ghost of a laugh. It was nothing to call a laugh; yet Everard felt proud of himself for having so far succeeded in turning her mood. The moon was up now, and shining upon her, making a whiteness all about her, and throwing shadows of the rails of the balcony, so that Reine’s head rose as out of a cage; but the look she turned to him was wistful, half-beseeching, though Reine was not aware of it. She half put out her hand to him. He was helping her out of that prison of grief and anxiety and wasted youth. “How wonderful,” she said, “to think we were all children once, not afraid of anything! I can’t make it out.” “Speak for yourself, my queen,” said Everard. “I was always mortally afraid of the ghost in the great staircase. I don’t like to go up or down now by myself. Reine, I looked into the old playroom the last time I was there. It was when poor Bertie was so ill. There were all our tops and our bats and your music, and I don’t know what rubbish besides. It went to my heart. I had to rush off and do something, or I should have broken down and made a baby of myself.”