Taggart's. I have never seen his without wondering how many dark secrets were underneath the velvet. Had this coat of yours been a perfect fit, believe me I had not expected much from you of honour or of decency. Oh! there I go on chattering again, and you have said scarcely twenty words.'

"Believe me, Madame la Duchesse, it is because I can find none good enough to express my gratitude," said Count Victor, making for the door.

"Pooh! Monsieur Soi-disant, a fig for your gratitude! Would you have me inhospitable to a guest who would save me even the trouble of opening my door? And that, by the way, reminds me, monsieur, that you have not even hinted at what you might be seeking his Grace for? Could it be-could it be for a better fit in coats?"

"For a mere trifle, madame, no more than my sword."

"Your sword, monsieur? I know nothing of Monsieur Soi-disant's sword, but I think I know where is one might serve his purpose."

With these words she went out of the room, hurried along the corridor, and returned in a moment or two with Count Victor's weapon, which she dragged back by its belt as if she loathed an actual contact with the thing itself.

"There!" she said, affecting a shudder. "A mouse and a rapier, they are my bitterest horrors. If you could only guess what a coward I am! Good night, monsieur, and I hope-I hope ❞—she laughed as she hung on the wish a moment-"I hope you will meet his Grace on the way. If so, you may tell him 'tis rather inclement weather for the night airat his age," and she laughed again. "If you do not see him as is possible-come back soon; look! my door bids you in your own language-Revenez bientôt. I am sure he will be charmed to see you; and to make his delight the more, I shall never mention you were here to-night."

She went along the lobby and looked down the

stair to see that the way was clear; came back and offered her hand.

"Madame la Duchesse, you are very magnanimous," he said, exceedingly grateful.

“Imprudent, rather," she corrected him.

Magnanimity and Prudence are cousins who, praise le bon Dieu! never speak to each other, and the world is very much better for it." He pointed to the motto on the panel. "I may never come back, madame," said he, "but at least I shall never forget."

"Au plaisir de vous revoir, Monsieur Soi-disant," she said in conclusion, and went into her room and closed the door.

"Now there's a darling!" said the Duchess as she heard his footsteps softly departing. "Archie was just such another-at his age.'

CHAPTER XXXIII.

BACK IN DOOM.

THE night brooded on the Highlands when Count Victor reached the shore. Snow and darkness clotted in the clefts of the valleys opening innumerably on the sea, but the hills held up their heads and thought among the stars-unbending and august and pure, knowing nothing at all of the glens and shadows. It was like a convocation of spirits. The peaks rose everywhere white to the brows and vastly ruminating. An ebbing tide too, so that the strand was bare. Up on the sands where there had been that folly of the morning the waves rolled in an ascending lisp, spilled upon at times with gold when the decaying moon-a halbert-head thrown angrily among Ossian's flying ghosts, the warrior cloudscut through them sometimes and was so reflected in the sea. The sea was good-good to hear and smell; the flying clouds were grateful to the eye; the stars-he praised God for the delicious stars not in words but in an exultation of gratitude and affection, yet the mountain-peaks were most of all his comforters.

He had run from the castle as if the devil had been at his red heels, with that ridiculous coat flapping its heavily braided skirts about his calves; passed through snow-smothered gardens, bordered boding dark plantations of firs, leaped opposing fell-dykes whence sheltering animals ran terrified at the ap

parition, and he came out upon the seaside at the bay as one who has overcome a nightmare and wakens to see the familiar friendly glimmer of the bedroom fire.

A miracle! and mainly worked by a glimpse of these blanched hills. For he knew now they were an inseparable part of his memory of Olivia, her hills, her sheltering sentinels, the mere sight of them Doom's orisons. Though he had thought of her so much when he shivered in the fosse, it had too often been as something unattainable, never to be seen again perhaps, a part of his life past and done with. An incubus rode his chest, though he never knew till now when it fled at the sight of Olivia's constant friends the mountains. Why, the girl lived! her home was round the corner there dark-jutting in the sea! He could, with some activity, be rapping at her father's door in a couple of hours!

"Grâce de Dieu!" said he, "let us leave trifles and go home."

It was a curious sign of his preoccupation, ever since he had escaped from his imprisonment, that he should not once have thought on where he was to fly to till this moment when the hills inspired. "Silence, thought, calm, and purity, here they are!" they seemed to tell him, and by no means unattainable. Where (now that he had time to think of it) could he possibly go to-night but to the shelter of Doom? Let the morrow decide for itself. À demain les affaires sérieuses! Doom and-Olivia. What eyes

she had, that girl! They might look upon the assailant of her wretched lover with anything but favour; yet even in anger they were more to him than those of all the world else in love.

Be sure Count Victor was not standing all the time of these reflections shivering in the snow. He had not indulged a moment's hesitation since ever he had come out upon the bay, and he walked through the night as fast as his miserable shoes would let him.

The miles passed, he crossed the rivers that mourned through hollow arches and spread out in brackish pools along the shore. Curlews piped dolorously the very psalm of solitude, and when he passed among the hazel-woods of Strone and Achnatra, their dark recesses belled continually with owls. It was the very pick of a lover's road: no outward vision but the sombre masses of the night, the valleys of snow, and the serene majestic hills to accompany that inner sight of the woman; no sounds but that of solemn waters and the forest creatures to make the memory of her words the sweeter. A road for lovers, and he was the second of the week, though he did not know it. Only, Simon MacTaggart had come up hot-foot on his horse, a trampling conqueror (as he fancied); the Count trudged shamefully undignified through snow that came high upon the silken stockings, and long ago had made his dancing-shoes shapeless and sodden. But he did not mind that he had a goal to make for, an ideal to cherish timidly. Once or twice he found himself with some surprise humming Gringoire's song, that surely should never go but with a light heart.

And in the fulness of time he approached the point of land from which he knew he could first see Doom's dark promontory if it were day. There his steps slowed. Somehow it seemed as if all his future fortune depended upon whether or not a light shone through the dark to greet him. Between him and the sea rolling in upon a spit of the land there was of all things!-a herd of deer dimly to be witnessed running back and forward on the sand as in some confusion at his approach: at another time the thing should have struck him with amazement, but now he was too busy with his speculation whether Doom should gleam on him or not to study this phenomenon of the frosty wilds. He made a bargain with himself: if the isle was black, that must mean his future fortune; if a light was there, however tiny, it was the star of happy omen, it was