Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, Lady Marabout's Troubles, and Other Stories

ood amidst its trees chained together by fragrant fetters of honeysuckle and wild vine, so undisturbed slept the morning shadows on the wild thyme that covered the turf

ure, even possessing a perfect replica of Pompadour in its own pretty pagan of a Marquise. Within a few leagues was Lunéville, but the echo of its mots and madrigals did not reach over the hills, did not profane the sunny air, did not mingle with

jessamine that clung to its ivy-covered walls-walls built long before Lorraine had ceased to be a kingdom and a power, long before a craven and effeminated Valois had dared to kick the dead body of a slaughtered Guise. Not gloomy with the golden light of a summer noon playing amidst the tangled boughs and on the silvered lichens; not gloomy, for under the elm-boughs o

fountain-spout, and hide itself with a rippling murmur under the broad green reeds and the leaves of the water-lily. She was a charming picture: a brunette with long ebon tresses, with her lashes drooping over her black, languid, almond-shaped eyes, a smile on her half-pouted li

here are yo

rom her hands, and a warm sudden blush tinging her cheeks and brow with a tint like that on t

eur Léon! how yo

g up, half shy, half smiling, all her treasures gathered from the woods-of flowers, of mosses, of ber

tte? Surely not. Are yo

d through her thick curled lashes, slyly yet arch

ie, as you looked down into the water? Tell me, Favette. You h

the blush on her cheeks as bright as that on the cups of the rose

e, mignonne.

Well, per

little words; it was first love that answered in his, as he threw himse

y hope, every dream, every thought of m

ette, with a sigh and a moue mutine, and

hed by that iron hand if they provoke its grasp. Vincennes yawns for those who dare to think, For-l'Evêque for those who dare to jest. Monsieur de Vo

h her plaited rushes, a

oltaire-who are they? I know n

d fondly stro

Speech and Free Thought; the other, a man who has suffered for both, but lo

your great heroes! You think nothing of me, save to ca

ow, and dashed away her tears-the tears of sixteen-as bright a

ach you in their convent solitude, and what the songs of the birds, the voices of the flowers, whisper to you of their woodland lore. I love you as you are! Every morning when I am far away from you, and from Lorraine, I shall think of you gathering the summer roses, calling the birds about you, bending over the fountain to see it mirror your own beauty; every evening I shall think of you leaning from the window, chanting softly to yourself the Ora pro nobis,

rushes: he saw her heart beat under its muslin corsage, like a bee caught and caged in the w

ou will even remember it? In those magnificent cities you will soon forget Lorrai

we meet again none shall supplant you for an hour, none rob you of one thou

t as we part, though you are the swallow, free to take flight over the seas to foreig

e gaudy tropical flowers that may have tempted him to rest on the wing and delay his homeward flight? Does not the violet ever welcome him the same, in its

life, in love, in faith; they who were beginning

e clefts of the rocks that the little child of six years old cried for and could not reach? What had she seen that she loved half so well as M. le Chevalier from the Castle, whom he

while the water bubbled among the violet tufts, among the grasses and wild thyme, and the dragon-flies fluttered their green and gold and purple wings amidst the