blue mist of great distances seen in dreams.

Yes, that old sculptor was the first who joined them in the sight
of all Paris. It was that old glory that opened the series of

companions of those morning rides; a series which extended through
three successive Parisian spring-times and comprised a famous

physiologist, a fellow who seemed to hint that mankind could be
made immortal or at least everlastingly old; a fashionable

philosopher and psychologist who used to lecture to enormous
audiences of women with his tongue in his cheek (but never

permitted himself anything of the kind when talking to Rita); that
surly dandy Cabanel (but he only once, from mere vanity), and

everybody else at all distinguished including also a celebrated
person who turned out later to be a swindler. But he was really a

genius. . . All this according to Mr. Blunt, who gave us all those
details with a sort of languid zest covering a secret irritation.

"Apart from that, you know," went on Mr. Blunt, "all she knew of
the world of men and women (I mean till Allegre's death) was what

she had seen of it from the saddle two hours every morning during
four months of the year or so. Absolutely all, with Allegre self-

denyingly on her right hand, with that impenetrable air of
guardianship. Don't touch! He didn't like his treasures to be

touched unless he actually put some unique object into your hands
with a sort of triumphant murmur, 'Look close at that.' Of course

I only have heard all this. I am much too small a person, you
understand, to even . . ."

He flashed his white teeth at us most agreeably, but the upper part
of his face, the shadowed setting of his eyes, and the slight

drawing in of his eyebrows gave a fatal suggestion. I thought
suddenly of the definition he applied to himself: "Americain,

catholique et gentil-homme" completed by that startling "I live by
my sword" uttered in a light drawing-room tone tinged by a flavour

of mockery lighter even than air.
He insisted to us that the first and only time he had seen Allegre

a little close was that morning in the Bois with his mother. His
Majesty (whom God preserve), then not even an active Pretender,

flanked the girl, still a girl, on the other side, the usual
companion for a month past or so. Allegre had suddenly taken it

into his head to paint his portrait. A sort of intimacy had sprung
up. Mrs. Blunt's remark was that of the two striking horsemen

Allegre looked the more kingly.
"The son of a confounded millionaire soap-boiler," commented Mr.

Blunt through his clenched teeth. "A man absolutely without
parentage. Without a single relation in the world. Just a freak."

"That explains why he could leave all his fortune to her," said
Mills.

"The will, I believe," said Mr. Blunt moodily, "was written on a
half sheet of paper, with his device of an Assyrian bull at the

head. What the devil did he mean by it? Anyway it was the last
time that she surveyed the world of men and women from the saddle.

Less than three months later. . ."
"Allegre died and. . . " murmured Mills in an interested manner.

"And she had to dismount," broke in Mr. Blunt grimly. "Dismount
right into the middle of it. Down to the very ground, you

understand. I suppose you can guess what that would mean. She
didn't know what to do with herself. She had never been on the

ground. She . . . "
"Aha!" said Mills.

"Even eh! eh! if you like," retorted Mr. Blunt, in an unrefined
tone, that made me open my eyes, which were well opened before,

still wider.
He turned to me with that horrible trick of his of commenting upon

Mills as though that quiet man whom I admired, whom I trusted, and
for whom I had already something resembling affection had been as

much of a dummy as that other one lurking in the shadows, pitiful
and headless in its attitude of alarmed chastity.

"Nothing escapes his penetration. He can perceive a haystack at an
enormous distance when he is interested."

I thought this was going rather too far, even to the borders of
vulgarity; but Mills remained untroubled and only reached for his

tobacco pouch.
"But that's nothing to my mother's interest. She can never see a

haystack, therefore she is always so surprised and excited. Of
course Dona Rita was not a woman about whom the newspapers insert

little paragraphs. But Allegre was the sort of man. A lot came
out in print about him and a lot was talked in the world about her;

and at once my dear mother perceived a haystack and naturally
became unreasonably absorbed in it. I thought her interest would

wear out. But it didn't. She had received a shock and had
received an impression by means of that girl. My mother has never

been treated with impertinence before, and the aesthetic impression
must have been of extraordinary strength. I must suppose that it

amounted to a sort of moral revolution, I can't account for her
proceedings in any other way. When Rita turned up in Paris a year

and a half after Allegre's death some shabby journalist (smart
creature) hit upon the notion of alluding to her as the heiress of

Mr. Allegre. 'The heiress of Mr. Allegre has taken up her
residence again amongst the treasures of art in that Pavilion so

well known to the elite of the artistic, scientific, and political
world, not to speak of the members of aristocratic and even royal

families. . . ' You know the sort of thing. It appeared first in
the Figaro, I believe. And then at the end a little phrase: 'She

is alone.' She was in a fair way of becoming a celebrity of a
sort. Daily little allusions and that sort of thing. Heaven only

knows who stopped it. There was a rush of 'old friends' into that
garden, enough to scare all the little birds away. I suppose one

or several of them, having influence with the press, did it. But
the gossip didn't stop, and the name stuck, too, since it conveyed

a very certain and very significant sort of fact, and of course the
Venetian episode was talked about in the houses frequented by my

mother. It was talked about from a royalist point of view with a
kind of respect. It was even said that the inspiration and the

resolution of the war going on now over the Pyrenees had come out
from that head. . . Some of them talked as if she were the guardian

angel of Legitimacy. You know what royalist gush is like."
Mr. Blunt's face expressed sarcastic disgust. Mills moved his head

the least little bit. Apparently he knew.
"Well, speaking with all possible respect, it seems to have

affected my mother's brain. I was already with the royal army and
of course there could be no question of regular postal

communications with France. My mother hears or overhears somewhere
that the heiress of Mr. Allegre is contemplating a secret journey.

All the noble Salons were full of chatter about that secret
naturally. So she sits down and pens an autograph: 'Madame,

Informed that you are proceeding to the place on which the hopes of
all the right thinking people are fixed, I trust to your womanly

sympathy with a mother's anxious feelings, etc., etc.,' and ending
with a request to take messages to me and bring news of me. . . The

coolness of my mother!"
Most unexpectedly Mills was heard murmuring a question which seemed

to me very odd.
"I wonder how your mother addressed that note?"

A moment of silence ensued.
"Hardly in the newspaper style, I should think," retorted Mr.

Blunt, with one of his grins that made me doubt the stability of
his feelings and the consistency of his outlook in regard to his

whole tale. "My mother's maid took it in a fiacre very late one
evening to the Pavilion and brought an answer scrawled on a scrap

of paper: 'Write your messages at once' and signed with a big
capital R. So my mother sat down again to her charming writing

desk and the maid made another journey in a fiacre just before
midnight; and ten days later or so I got a letter thrust into my

hand at the avanzadas just as I was about to start on a night
patrol, together with a note asking me to call on the writer so