ONE WHO MUST REMEMBER.
Edward Heathcote had been away from Paris when Miss Meyerstein's
telegram arrived at the Hôtel de Bade. He had gone on a journey of
something over a hundred miles on the Western Railway, a journey
undertaken with the idea of adding one more link to the chain which he
had been slowly putting together; one more chapter in the history of
Marie Prévol.
He had been disappointed in those who were to have helped him in his
task; and it was to his own patience and resources that he was for
the most part indebted for such progress as he had made. Drubarde,
the ex-police-officer, had been able to do no more than to supply the
formal record of the evidence before the _Juge d'Instruction_. He could
throw no light upon the previous history of the supposed murderer: he
could offer no clue to his subsequent fate.
Sigismond Trottier, from whose keen wit Heathcote had hoped for such
valuable aid, had broken down altogether. He had failed to furnish any
further reminiscences of his old acquaintance Georges.
"I want to know what the man was like," said Heathcote, at their last
interview. "If you could put me into communication with any artist
friend of yours who knew Georges well, and can remember him well enough
to give me his likeness from memory--were it the slightest sketch--I
would pay your friend liberally for his work, and be very grateful to
you for bringing the matter about."
"I know no such man," answered Trottier curtly.
"That is very strange. Surely there must be some such person among
those who can remember Georges. You say that his only friends were of
the literary and artistic world."
"_Nom d'un nom_", exclaimed Trottier impatiently, "I suppose I had
better be frank with you. Yes, it is quite possible there may be
some one who knew Georges, and who could give you such a sketch
as you want. But I will not help you to find that person. I liked
Georges--liked him well, mark you. I have profited by his generosity,
have gone to him for help when I was in very low water. I am not going
to turn and sting my benefactor. Granted that he was an assassin. I can
find excuses even for that crime, for I know how he loved Marie Prévol.
I am not going to help you to hunt him down. If he is alive and has
repented his sin, let him alone, to be dealt with by his Creator and
his Judge. What are we that we should pretend to condemn or to punish
him?"
"I have sworn to myself to find the last link in the chain."
"Why should you want to hunt this man down?"
"That is my secret. I have a motive, and a very powerful one. It may
be that I have no intention to betray the wretch to justice; that when
the tangled skein shall be unravelled, and the mystery of that man's
life made clear, that in the hour of success I may be merciful, may
hold my hand, and keep the murderer's secret from the outside world.
But I want to know that secret, I want to be able to stand face to face
with that man and to say, 'You are the murderer of Marie Prévol and
her lover; you are the murderer of the helpless girl who went alone to
England, having in her possession certain papers which threw too strong
a light upon your guilty past. You, who have held your head erect
before the world, and have passed for a man of honour and probity, you
are the remorseless villain whose life stands twice forfeited to the
law.'"
Heathcote was pacing up and down the room, intensely agitated. He had
abandoned himself wholly to the passion of the moment, forgetful of
Trottier's presence, forgetful of all things except that one fixed
purpose of his mind which had become almost monomania.
"What would you gain by this?" asked Trottier, wondering at this new
aspect of his English friend.
"Revenge! There is enough of the old Adam left in the best of us to
make revenge sweet. What must it be to a man who has lost the one
delight that made life worth living?"
"I cannot help you to your revenge," answered Trottier. "I was fond of
Georges. I hope you may never be able to look in his face and accuse
him of the past. I hope he may be spared that shame. I cannot for the
life of me understand why you should pursue a stranger with such deadly
hatred."
"That is my secret, I say again. If you will not help me, so be it. I
must go on working on my own account. But the face--the face--that is,
perhaps, the only identification possible. The links of the chain fall
into their places--the facts that I have slowly gathered all point to
one conclusion; but absolute identification is impossible until I can
find a portrait of the man who called himself Georges."
"You are not offended with me, I hope?"
"No, Trottier, I understand your refusal; I respect your loyalty to an
old friend. But I must get the portrait I want, somehow, without your
help."
Thus ended all hope of aid from Sigismond Trottier. Drubarde, on
the other hand, had assured his client that he saw no new clue to
the discovery of the missing murderer. If that murderer were indeed
identical with the man who met Léonie Lemarque at Charing Cross, if he
had surpassed himself in crime by the murder of that helpless girl, it
was for the English police, to hunt him down. With such a man as Joseph
Distin to inspire their movements, the English police--making due
allowance for the dulness of a _rosbif_-eating nation--ought to work
wonders; and here was a case which offered the chances of distinction;
here was an assassin going about red-handed, as it were, after a murder
not three months old.
"You expect me to find the murderer of Marie Prévol, a man who escaped
us ten years ago; and here are your pampered and over-paid English
detectives who cannot find the man who threw Léonie Lemarque out of a
railway-carriage last July. Is that common sense, do you think, Mr.
Heathcote? No, sir; in Paris I am on my own ground. I know this great
city from cellar to garret--her bridges, her suburbs, her quarries,
her sewers, and caverns, and waste places, all the holes and crannies
where crime and vice have hidden for the last forty years; but from
the moment your criminal has got to the other side of the Channel, I
wash my hands of him. My talents can serve you no further."
Mr. Heathcote recompensed the police-officer handsomely for the very
little he had done; and so they parted, M. Drubarde vastly pleased with
his client, but still better pleased with himself. He was a man whose
benign consciousness of his own value in the social scale mellowed with
advancing years.
Having been thus abandoned by both his gifted coadjutors, Edward
Heathcote worked on by his own lights. There was one person, he told
himself, who might be able to assist him--one person whose chief desire
in life must be to see the murderer of Marie Prévol and her lover
brought to his doom. Among the few scraps of information which Trottier
had given to his friend there was the fact that the dowager Baronne de
Maucroix, the widowed mother of the murdered man, was still living. She
resided at her château in Normandy, where she led a life of strictest
seclusion, devoting herself to acts of charity and to the severest
religious exercises.
It was in the hope of obtaining an interview with this lady that
Heathcote left Paris upon the very morning on which Miss Meyerstein
telegraphed the news of Hilda's flight. He had no letter of
introduction, no credentials to offer to Mdme. de Maucroix, except
the one fact of his keen interest in the after-fate of her son's
murderer. There was some audacity in the idea of so presenting himself
before a venerable recluse of ancient family, a woman who, according
to Sigismond Trottier, had been distinguished in her youth for pride
and exclusiveness; a woman who had ranked herself with the Condés and
the Mortemarts, who had ignored the house of Orleans, and loathed the
Imperial rule.
The château of the Maucroix family was about five miles on the eastward
side of Rouen. It was situate on low ground, a little way from the
banks of the Seine--an imposing pile of Gothic architecture, guarded by
a moat, and approached by an avenue of funereal yews. The surrounding
landscape was flat and uninteresting. The broad bright river, winding
in bold curves across the level meads, with here and there a willowy
islet, gave a certain charm to scenery which would otherwise have been
without a redeeming feature. Far off in the distance the chimney-shafts
and spires of Rouen rose dark against the gray October sky.
Edward Heathcote felt the depressing influence of those level fields,
the gloom of that dark avenue and sunless day. It seemed to him as if
he were going into a grave, a place whence life and hope had fled for
ever.
He crossed the low stone bridge which spanned the moat, and found
himself in an old-fashioned garden of that stately period which gave
grandeur to the fountains and parterres of Versailles. Here, too, there
were large marble basins, Tritons and Nereids: but the fountains were
not playing; there was no pleasant plashing of silvery water-drops to
break the dreary stillness of that deserted garden. Everything was in
perfect order, not a withered leaf upon the velvet lawns or the smooth
gravel paths. But even amidst this neatness there was a neglected
look. No flowers brightened the dark borders. There were only the
gloomy evergreens of a century's growth, some of them pyramids of dark
foliage, others cut into fantastic shapes, an artistic development of
the gardeners of the past, which had been carefully preserved by the
gardeners of the present.
A white-haired _maître d'hôtel_ came out into the echoing hall to
answer the stranger's inquiries.
"Madame la Baronne is at home," he replied stiffly. "Madame rarely goes
out of doors, except to her church, or, under peculiar circumstances,
to her poor. Madame la Baronne receives no one except her priest."
"I hope that Madame will make another exception in my favour," said
Heathcote quietly. "Be good enough to take her that letter."
He had written to Mdme. de Maucroix before leaving Paris, and he hoped
that this letter would serve him as an "open sesame."
"Madame,--For particular reasons of my own, I am keenly
desirous to trace the murderer of your son; and,
believing myself to be already on the right track, I
venture to entreat the favour of an interview. I am
an Englishman of good birth and education, and I shall
know how to respect any confidence with which you may
honour me. Accept, Madame, the assurance of my high
consideration, EDWARD HEATHCOTE.
"To the Baroness de Maucroix."
Heathcote was shown into a room leading out of the hall, the first of
a suite of rooms opening one into another in a remote perspective. The
doors were open, and the visitor could see to the end of the vista.
The parquetted floors, with the cold light reflected on their polished
surface from the high narrow windows, the sculptured pediments above
the doors, the crystal girandoles, the sombre-looking pictures--all had
an old-world air, and gave the idea of a house which strangers visited
now and then as a monument of the past, but which had long been empty
of domestic life and warmth and comfort. The far-off echo of his own
footsteps startled Heathcote as he slowly paced the polished floor.
He had not long to wait. The _maître d'hôtel_ appeared after about ten
minutes' interval, evidently astonished at the result of his mission,
and informed Heathcote that the Baroness would see him.
"Mdme. la Baronne is old and in weak health, Monsieur," said the
servant, who had grown gray in the service of his mistress, and who
worshipped her. "I hope your business with her is not of an agitating
kind. She seemed much troubled by your letter. A violent shock might
kill her."
"There will be no violent shock, my friend," replied Heathcote kindly.
"I shall be obliged to talk to Mdme. la Baronne of painful memories,
but I shall be careful of her feelings."
"I hope Monsieur will pardon me for making the suggestion."
"With all my heart."
The old servant led the way up the wide semicircular staircase to a
corridor above, and to a suite of rooms over those which Heathcote had
seen below. They passed through an anteroom, and then entered by a
curtained doorway which led into Mdme. de Maucroix's sitting-room, the
only room which she had occupied for the last ten years. The _salons_
and music-rooms, the library and card-room on the lower floor, had
remained empty and desolate since her son's death. Her bedchamber and
dressing-room were situated behind this small _salon_, and another door
opened into the suite of apartments which had been occupied by her son.
These she visited and inspected daily. They were kept in the order in
which he had left them, on his last journey to Paris. Not an object,
however trifling, had been changed.
There were logs burning on the hearth, although the first chill winds
of autumn had not yet been felt: but the Baroness kept a fire in her
room all the year round. The cheery blaze and a large black poodle
of almost super-canine intelligence were her only companions. On an
exquisite little buhl table by her armchair lay her missal and her
_Imitation of Christ_. These two books were her only literature.
The poodle advanced slowly across the Persian carpet to meet the
visitor, and made a deliberate inspection. The result was satisfactory,
for he gave three or four solemn swings of his leonine tail, and then
composed himself in a dignified position in front of the fire.
The Baroness, who was seated in a deep and spacious armchair,
acknowledged Heathcote's entrance only by a dignified bend of her head.
She was a woman of remarkable appearance even in the sixty-seventh year
of her age. She possessed that classic beauty of feature which time
cannot take away. No matter that the pale pure skin was faded from its
youthful bloom, that the lines of care and thought were drawn deeply
upon the broad brow and about the melancholy mouth: the outline of the
face was such as a sculptor would have chosen for a Hecuba or a Dido.
She was above the average height of women, and sat erect in her
high-backed chair with a majestic air which impressed Edward Heathcote.
Her plainly fashioned black silk gown and India muslin fichu recalled
Delaroche's famous picture of Marie Antoinette, and her cast of
countenance in some wise resembled that of the martyred queen; but the
features were more perfect in their harmony, the outline was more
statuesque. In a word, the Baroness had been lovelier than the Queen.
She motioned Heathcote to a chair on the opposite side of the hearth.
"You are interested in tracing the murderer of my son," she said. "That
is strange--after ten years--and you an Englishman! What concern can
you have in the fate of that man?"
There was the faintest quiver in her voice as she spoke of her son,
otherwise her tones were clear and self-possessed; her large dark eyes
contemplated the stranger with calmest scrutiny.
"That is in some wise my secret, Madame," replied Heathcote. "I will be
as frank with you as I can; but there are motives which I must keep to
myself until this investigation of mine has come to an end--until I can
tell you that I have found the murderer of Marie Prévol, that I have
proof positive of his guilt."
"And then, Monsieur--what then?" asked the Baroness.
"Madame, it is perhaps you who should be the arbiter of the murderer's
fate; in the event of such evidence as may be conclusive to you and
me being also strong enough to insure his conviction by a French jury.
French jurymen are so merciful, Madame, and your judges so full of
sentiment. They would perhaps regard the death of those two young
people--slain in the flower of their youth--as an outbreak of jealous
feeling for which the murderer was to be pitied rather than punished.
The law is always kind to the shedders of blood. It is the child
who steals a loaf, or the journalist who by some carelessly edited
paragraph wounds the fine feelings of our aristocracy--it is for such
as these there is no mercy. But in the event of my being able to find
the assassin, and to furnish conclusive evidence of his guilt, what
would be your line of conduct, Madame?"
The Dowager was slow to reply. She waited with fixed brows, meditative,
absorbed, for some moments.
"There was a time," she said at last, "when I should have been quick
to reply to such a question--when I thirsted for the blood of my son's
murderer. Yes, when my parched lips longed to drink that blood, as
the savage laps the life-stream of his foe. But years have worked
their chastening influence--years given up to religious exercises,
mark you, Monsieur, not wasted upon the frivolities of this world. I
have sought for consolation from no carnal sources. Pleasure has never
crossed the threshold of my dwelling since my son's corpse was carried
in at my door. Some people try to forget their griefs; they steep
themselves in the banalities of this life; they stifle memory amidst
the intoxications of a frivolous existence. I am not one of those. I
have nursed my sorrow, lived with it, lived upon it, until looking back
it seems to me that even in these long slow years of mourning I have
not been actually separated from my dead son. In my prayers, in my
thoughts, in my waking and sleeping, his image has been ever present,
the most precious part of my existence. I believe that he is in heaven,
that such prayers as have been breathed for him, together with the
services of the Church, must have shortened his time of purgation, that
his purified soul is at rest in the blessed home where I hope some day
to rejoin him. Confession, penance, mortifications of all kinds have
subjugated the natural evil in my character. My cry for vengeance has
long been dumb. If that cruel murderer yet lives, I hope that he may be
brought by suffering to repentance. I do not hunger for his death."
There was such an air of lofty feeling, such absolute truth in the tone
and manner of Madame de Maucroix, that Heathcote could but admire and
respect this cold serenity of grief.
"He has brought my gray hairs in sorrow to the grave," said the
Baroness softly, "but I have been taught to pity all sinners, as our
Saviour pitied the worst and vilest, with inexhaustible compassion."
"Madame, if you who so loved your son can be merciful, there is no one
living who has a right to exact the murderer's blood. And now forgive
me if I venture to question you about that sad story. For some time
past I have devoted myself to this case. I have slowly put together
the links of a chain of evidence, until there is but little wanting to
complete the circle. Your knowledge may furnish me with those missing
links. Tell me in the first place whether you believe--and have always
believed--that the man called Georges was the murderer of your son."
"I have never doubted his guilt. There was no one else; no one whom my
boy had ever offended. Remember, Monsieur, he was but three-and-twenty
years of age, amiable, generous, accomplished, beloved by all who knew
him. He had not an enemy, except the man whose jealousy he had aroused."
"Did he know the man Georges?"
"Unhappily, yes. Had he never known Georges he would never have
fallen in love with Mdlle. Prévol. Georges was an intimate friend of
an artist whom my son patronised; a remarkably clever painter, who
twelve or thirteen years ago promised to become famous, but who never
fulfilled that promise. Maxime sat to this M. Tillet for a half-length
portrait--the man had a genius for portraits--and Tillet introduced him
to the Bohemian circle in which Georges was living. It was a very small
circle, consisting of about a dozen men in all, mostly journalists and
painters. Georges appeared to have a liking for my son; Maxime's youth
and freshness interested him; he said, in a world where everybody was
_blasé_. He invited him to little suppers of three or four intimates,
at which Marie Prévol was present. From that hour my son's head was
turned. He fell passionately in love with this actress. He thought
of her by day and night, abandoned himself utterly to his idolatry,
desired ardently to make her his wife."
"He did not believe that she was married to Georges?"
"That was his difficulty. In his love and reverence for her he could
not endure to think of her as in a degraded position; yet if she
were already a wife, Maxime could never hope to win her. In his mad,
headstrong love he was ready to forgive her past career, to redeem her
from her degraded position, and make her the Baroness de Maucroix.
He, who had been educated in the pride of race as in the gospel, was
willing to marry an actress with a tarnished character!"
"Did he make you the confidante of his passion, Madame?"
"For some time he kept his secret from me; but I knew that he was
unhappy, and I knew that there was only one kind of grief possible in
such a life as his, where nature and fortune had been alike lavish.
He had been my companion and adviser from the day of my widowhood;
and we were nearer and dearer to each other, and more in each other's
confidence, than mothers and sons usually are. More than once I had
entreated him to tell me the nature of his trouble, to let me help
him, if that were possible; and he had told me that there was no one
who could help him in the great crisis of his life. 'I must be either
the happiest or the most miserable of men,' he said. One night I went
into his room and found him ill, feverish, in a half-delirious state,
raving about Marie Prévol. This broke the ice, and during the brief
illness that followed--the effect of cold, fatigue, excitement, and
late hours--I obtained his confidence. He told me the whole story of
his love for this beautiful actress; how at their first meeting he had
been enslaved by her exquisite loveliness, her indescribable charm of
manner. He protested that her nature was purity itself, despite her
false position. She was the victim of circumstances. And then he told
me that Georges spoke of her as his wife, treated her with a respect
rarely shown to women of light character; and this thought that his
idol was another man's wife filled my unhappy son with despair."
"You warned him of the danger of his position, no doubt, Madame."
"Not once only, but again and again. With all the fervour of a mother's
prayers did I implore him to escape from this fatal entanglement. I
urged him to travel, to go to Spain, Italy, Africa--Algiers was at that
time a favourite resort for men of fashion--anywhere so long as he
withdrew himself from the fascination which could end only in ruin. But
it was in vain that I pleaded. Passion was stronger than common sense,
duty, or religion. He was caught on a wheel from which he would not
even try to extricate himself."
"And your affection could do nothing."
"Nothing. From that time my son was lost to me. He shrank from
confiding in me, not because I had been severe--never had I breathed
one uncharitable word against the woman he loved. His love made her
sacred to me; but I had spoken the words of common sense. I had tried
to stand between him and his own folly. That was enough. He loved his
madness better than he loved me--he who had been until that time almost
an adoring son. When the time came for us to come here for the autumn
he refused to leave Paris, and I was too anxious to allow him to remain
there alone. I stayed at our house in the Rue de l'Université, where
my son had his apartments, his private keys and private staircase,
by which he could come in at any hour, without his movements being
known to the household. I hardly know how he lived or what he did
during those long days of July and August, while all our circle of
acquaintance were away by the sea or in the mountains, and while we
seemed to be alone in a deserted city. Several of the theatres were
closed during those months; but the Porte-Saint-Martin had made a great
success with a fairy piece, and kept open for the strangers who filled
Paris.
"I believe that my son went every night to the theatre, that he saw
Marie Prévol at every opportunity, and that his only motive in life
was his love for her. For me the days went by in dull monotony. A
presentiment of evil oppressed me, waking or sleeping. Long before
the coming of calamity I felt the agony of an inevitable grief. I knew
not what form my misery would take; but I knew that my boy was doomed.
When they brought home his bleeding corpse in the summer evening,
four-and-twenty hours after the murder, I met the messengers of evil as
one prepared for the worst. I had lost him long before his death."
She spoke with infinite composure. She had familiarised herself with
her sorrow, lived with it, cherished it, until grief had lost its power
to agitate. Not a tone faltered as she spoke of that tragical past. Her
countenance was as calm as marble. Every line in the noble face spoke
of a settled sorrow, every line had become unalterable as the lines of
a statue.
"You say, Madame, that the painter Tillet was upon intimate terms with
Georges," said Heathcote. "Is this M. Tillet still living?"
"I believe so. I never heard of his death. He has clever sons whose
names are before the public. I have heard people mention them, though I
have never seen their works. My knowledge of secular art and literature
ceased ten years ago."
"I should be glad to find M. Tillet," said Heathcote. "He is the very
man I want to discover--a man whose pencil could recall for me the face
of the missing Georges. You say, Madame, that he was an intimate friend
of Georges, and that he was a clever portrait-painter. Such a man would
not have forgotten his friend's face."
"If you knew what Georges was like, do you suppose you could find him?"
asked the Baroness, without eagerness, but with a grave intensity,
which accentuated the severe lines of her countenance.
"Yes," replied Heathcote. "I believe that in four-and-twenty hours I
could lay my hand on the assassin's shoulder and say, 'Thou art the
man.'"
"In four-and-twenty hours? There is a distance, then, between you. The
man you suspect is not in Paris."
"No, he is not in Paris."
"And if, by means of M. Tillet's art, you are able to assure yourself
of his identity, how will you deal with him? Would you deliver him up
to justice?"
"Ah, Madame, who knows? Our great poet has said that there is a
divinity which shapes our ends--not as we have planned them. If the
assassin of your son is the person I believe him to be, he is already
punished. He is a doomed man. Joy and hope and comfort are dead for
him. The criminal court and the guillotine could be no harder ordeal
than the suffering of his daily life. If he is guilty, Heaven has
not been blind to his sin. The Eternal Doomsman has pronounced his
sentence."
A faint flush illuminated the settled pallor of Mdme. de Maucroix's
countenance, a light sparkled in her eyes.
"I knew that he would not escape," she said, in a low voice. "Heaven is
just."
"If you will kindly give me M. Tillet's address, Madame, I shall be
deeply obliged."
"I can only tell you an address of ten years ago. M. Tillet lived at
that time in the Rue Saint-Guillaume. He was then in the flush of
success, and I have heard my son say that he had a handsome apartment.
Where he may live now in his decadence I know not. But his sons are
known, and you will have no difficulty in getting information."
"I apprehend not, Madame. And now, if you will permit me, I would ask
one more question."
"As many as you please, Monsieur."
"Have you in your possession any scrap of Georges' writing--any note,
however brief?"
"No. There was no such thing found among my boy's effects. The police
requested that such a letter or letters should be looked for. They,
too, were anxious to procure a specimen of the suspected man's writing;
but, although I looked most carefully through all my son's papers,
I discovered no such letter. There were two or three notes from
Tillet conveying invitations from Georges, but there was no direct
communication from the man himself."
"He was doubtless a man who had taken the old saying to heart," said
Heathcote. "'_Litera scripta manet._' I have to thank you, Madame, for
your gracious reception, and, above all, for your candour."
"In a life like mine, Monsieur, there is no room for untruthfulness
or hypocrisy. My existence moves in too narrow a circle. I have no
interest outside my son's grave, and my own hope of salvation.
Perhaps, before you leave this house, you would like to see the
apartments in which Maxime lived. They have been kept just as he
left them when he went back to Paris for the last time after the
shooting-season."
"I should like much to see them," said Heathcote, standing hat in hand
before the Baroness.
It seemed to him that she had a melancholy pleasure in dwelling on the
image of her murdered son; that it would gratify her to show the rooms
which he had inhabited, even to a stranger.
The Baroness rose, a tall erect figure, dignified and graceful in
advancing age as she had been in the bloom of her beauty, when Louis
Philippe was king. She moved with stately steps towards the door at the
end of her _salon_, and led the way into the adjoining room.
It was a large room, richly furnished, and full of such luxuries as a
young man loves. Dwarf book-cases lined the four walls. On one side,
above the array of richly-bound volumes, appeared a costly collection
of arms, both modern and antique. The fireplace was a kind of alcove,
furnished with luxurious seats, upholstered in copper-red velvet. Old
tapestry, old miniatures, bronzes, curios of all kinds filled the room
with endless varieties of form and colour. A tapestry curtain screened
the door of the adjoining bedchamber. The Baroness drew aside the heavy
tapestry with her wasted hand, and led the stranger into the room where
her son had slept through so many peaceful nights in his happy youth.
A carved ivory crucifix of large size, a _chef-d'oeuvre_, yellow
with age, hung over the pillow on which that young head had so often
slumbered. The attenuated form of the Redeemer showed in sharp relief
against the olive-velvet draperies of the bed. Heathcote observed that
the Persian rug beside the bed was worn in the centre, as if with much
use, and he could guess whose knees had left the trace of prayerful
hours upon the fabric, as he saw the eyes of the Dowager fixed upon
that pallid figure of her martyred Saviour.
"I have lived half my days for the last ten years in this room," she
said quietly. "I hope to die here. If I have sense and knowledge left
me, I shall creep here when I feel that my end is near."
Over the mantelpiece hung Maxime de Maucroix's portrait, the picture of
a bright young face, perfect in form and colouring, but most beautiful
by reason of the hope and gladness that shone in the sunny eyes, the
frank clear outlook of an untainted soul. Heathcote could understand
the fascination exercised over a woman like Marie Prévol by such a man
as this, with all the adjuncts of rank, talent, wealth, and fashion.
They went back to the Baroness's _salon_, and Heathcote took his leave,
to return to Rouen, where he stayed the night.