Judge Favart de Caumartin's residence was a large, rambling structure,
more like a hotel than like a private house. Considering that his wife
was dead and that he had but one living child, a daughter of seventeen,
it was strange that he kept up such an extensive establishment, in
which, perhaps, twenty rooms stood richly furnished but unoccupied. It
was his pleasure, however, and his pleasure was law.
Mlle. Olympe de Caumartin was greatly surprised when by merest chance
she discovered Hepworth Coleman making himself quite at home in a remote
room of the house. We have seen how she showed her confusion as she
stepped into the doorway and found herself face to face with the young
man. The glance that passed between them wrought a wonder in the heart
of each. I shall not say that they fell in love at first sight. Love
cannot be so accurately traced that its origin can be exactly found out
in any particular case. It is enough to record that Mlle. Olympe de
Caumartin caught something new, something sweet from that momentary
gaze, and shut it up in her heart involuntarily, with a thrill that
never again quite left her breast. She was back through halls and rooms
to her own boudoir, her cheeks and lips rosy with excitement, and a
gentle tremor in her limbs.
That evening in the library the Judge told his daughter that he had
given a suit of rooms in the farthest wing of the mansion to a wealthy
young gentleman from New York.
"I have had letters from Mr. Cartwright, my banker there, asking me to
take care of him, and this seemed the best I could do under the
circumstances. I did not see my way to bringing him any nearer to us. We
don't care to have another member added to our family, eh, Olympe,
dear?"
Mlle. de Caumartin blushed. She may have felt a touch of guilt because
she could not muster courage to tell her father that she had already
visited Mr. Coleman.
"I have not seen him yet," continued the Judge; "I thought it best to
let him have some rest before calling upon him. Cartwright advises me
that he is of an excellent family--a man to be given the greatest
attention, and for my banker's sake, if for nothing else, I must meet
the demand upon my hospitality. He came a fortnight earlier than I
expected; but I had Jules watching for him, and you know Jules never
fails."
"But you should have told me before, father dear," said Mlle. Olympe.
"Only a while ago, while wandering through the distant wing of the
house, I invaded this young gentleman's apartment. It surprised him
evidently as much as it abashed me."
"The obvious moral of which is," replied the Judge quickly, "that you
are hereafter to be more careful about what rooms you are stumbling
into." As he spoke his dark oval face, with its fine, grave smile, was
almost like a boy's. The flush that lay under the skin shone through
with a suggestion of some repressed stimulus, as if a great passion had
forced it up. In his eyes an underglow, so to call it, smoldered with
fascinating vagueness.
Mlle. Olympe sat for a moment on his knee and stroked his long black
hair.
"You will stay with me to-night, father, dear," she presently murmured,
coaxingly; "you will not go out to-night."
"I must be gone a little while," he said, rising at once, "but just a
little while."
She clung close to him.
"Not this night, please," she urged, with a touching tremor in her
voice. "Oh! you remember this night a year ago you had that dreadful
adventure in the dark room. You must not go out; please, for my sake, do
not."
An expert observer could have seen while this was going on a strange,
half-worried, almost fiercely concentrated expression in the Judge's
eyes. It was as if he mightily wished to remain with his child, but
could not by any effort resist some powerful temptation tugging at him
and drawing him away.
He kissed her tenderly, pushed her gently from him and went out.
The girl cast herself upon a sofa and buried her face in her hands, as a
vision of that night one year before came up before her eyes.
Some strange masked men had brought her father home far in the night,
white as a ghost, helpless, speechless, apparently dead. They put him
down there in the room and vanished.
He had no wound, no bruise, no mark of any violence. But he recovered
very slowly, and he never told what had befallen him.
Mlle. Olympe knew of her father's frequent duels, and if he had been
brought in dead or badly off on account of pistol ball or rapier thrust
she would not have been surprised beyond measure, but this mysterious
performance of the masked men and the unaccountable condition of the
Judge were taken hold upon by her imagination and raised to the highest
power of romantic meaning.
A year had passed, and she might not have recalled the exact anniversary
but for the prattle of an old servant to the effect that she had seen
her master, the Judge, marching at the head of a company of masked men,
himself wearing an "invisible" mask and a queer black velvet cap.
Mlle. Olympe observed that her father was flushed as if with wine, and
his bearing was indicative of some subtile and indescribable excitement
within him. When he went away she felt that something startling was
going to happen soon.