"Heavens! What horrors you fancy! Pray give us some music child, and drive away the gloomy pictures you have suggested."

"An easy penance;" and the Marquise moved smilingly towards the alcove.

"What!" cried the Countess Helene, in protest, "and the story unfinished! Why, it might develop into a romance. I dote on romances in real life or fiction, but I like them all spelled out for me to the very end."

"Instead of a romance, I should fancy the girl's life very prosaic wherever it is lived," returned the Marquise. "But before her year at the convent had quite expired she made her escape--took no one into her confidence; and when her guardian, or his agent, came to claim her, there were storms, apologies, but no ward."

"And you do not call that a romance?" said the Countess. "I do; it offers all sorts of possibilities."

"Yes, the possibility of this;" and Mrs. McVeigh pointed to the picture before them. The Marquise halted, looked curiously at the speaker, then regarded the oriental face on the canvas thoughtfully, and pa.s.sed her hand over her brow with a certain abstraction.

"I never thought of that," she said slowly. "You poor creature!" and she took a step nearer the picture. "I--never--thought of that! Maman, Madame McVeigh has just taught me something--to be careful, careful how we judge the unfortunate. They say this Kora is a light woman in morals; but suppose--suppose somewhere the life that girl told of in the convent really does exist, and suppose this pretty Kora had been one of the victims chosen! Should we dare then to judge her by our standards, Maman? I think not."

Without awaiting an opinion she walked slowly into the alcove, and left the three ladies gazing at each other with a trifle of constraint mingled with their surprise.

"Another sacred cause to fight for," sighed the dowager, with a quaint grimace. "Last week it was the Jews, who seem to me quite able to take care of themselves! Next week it may be Hindoo widows; but just now it is Kora!"

"She should have been born a boy in the age when it was thought a virtue to don armor and do battle for the weak or incapable; that would have suited Judithe."

"Not if it was the fashion," laughed the Countess Helene; "she would insist on being original."

"The Marquise has a lovely name," remarked Mrs. McVeigh; "one could not imagine a weak or unattractive person called Judithe."

"No; they could not," agreed her friend, "it makes one think of the tragedy of Holofernes. It suggests the strange, the fascinating, the unusual, and--it suits Madame la Marquise."

"Your approval is an unconscious compliment to me," remarked the dowager, indulging herself in a tiny pinch of snuff and tapping the jeweled lid of the box; "I named her."

"Indeed!" and Mrs. McVeigh smiled at the complacent old lady, while the Countess Helene almost stared. Evidently she, also, had heard the opinions concerning the young widow's foreign extraction. Possibly the dowager guessed what was pa.s.sing in her mind, for she nodded and smiled.

"Truly, the eyes did it. Though she was not so fully developed as now, those slumbrous, oriental eyes of hers suggested someway that beauty of Bethulia; the choice was left to me and so she was christened Judithe."

"She voices such startlingly paganish ideas at times that I can scarcely imagine her at the christening font," remarked the Countess.

"In truth her questions are hard to answer sometimes. But the heart is all right."

"And the lady herself magnetic enough without the added suggestion of the name," remarked Mrs. McVeigh; then she held up her finger as the Countess was about to speak, for from the music room came the appealing legato notes of "Suwanee River," played with great tenderness.

"What is it?" asked the dowager.

"One of our American folk songs," and the grey eyes of the speaker were bright with tears; "in all my life I have never heard it played so exquisitely."

"For a confirmed blue stocking, the Marquise understands remarkably well how to make her little compliments," said the Countess Helene.

Mrs. McVeigh arose, and with a slight bow to the dowager, pa.s.sed into the alcove. At the last bar of the song a shadow fell across the keys, and the musician saw their American visitor beside her.

"I should love to have you see the country whose music you interpret so well," she said impulsively; "I should like to be with you when you do see it."

"You are kind, and I trust you may be," replied the Marquise, with a pretty nod that was a bow in miniature. She was rising from the piano, when Mrs. McVeigh stopped her.

"Pray don't! It is a treat to hear you. I only wanted to ask you to take my invitation seriously and come some time to our South Carolina home; I should like to be one of your friends."

"It would give me genuine pleasure," was the frank reply. "You know I confessed that my sympathies were there ahead of me." The smile accompanying the words was so adorable that Mrs. McVeigh bent to kiss her.

The Marquise offered her cheek with a graciousness that was a caress in itself, and thus their friendship commenced.

After the dowager and her daughter-in-law were again alone, and with an a.s.surance that even the privileged Dumaresque would not break in on their evening, the elder lady asked, abruptly, a question over which she had been puzzling.

"Child, what possessed you to tell to a Southern woman of the States that story reflecting on the most vital of their economic inst.i.tutions? Had you forgotten their prejudices? I was in dread that you might offend her, and I am sure Helene Biron was quite as nervous."

"I did not offend her, Maman," replied the Marquise, looking up from her embroidery with a smile, "and I had not forgotten their prejudices. I only wanted to judge if she herself had ever heard the story."

"Madame McVeigh!--and why?"

"Because Rhoda Larue was also a native of that particular part of Carolina to which she has invited me, and because of a fact which I have never forgotten, the young planter for whom she was educated--the slave owner who bought her from her father's brother was named McVeigh. My new friend is delightful in herself but--she has a son."

"My child!" gasped the dowager, staring at her. "Such a man the son of that charming, sincere woman! Yes, I had forgotten their name, and bid you forget the story; never speak of it again, child!"

"I should be sorry to learn it is the same family," admitted the Marquise; "still, I shall make a point of avoiding the son until we learn something about him. It is infamous that such men should be received into society."

The dowager relapsed into silence, digesting the troublesome question proposed.

Occasionally she glanced towards the Marquise as though in expectation of a continuation of the subject. But the Marquise was engrossed by her embroideries, and when she did speak again it was of some entirely different matter.

CHAPTER III.

Two mornings later M. Dumaresque stood in the Caron reception room staring with some dissatisfaction across the breadth of green lawn where the dryad and faun statues held vases of vining and blooming things.

He had just been told the dowager was not yet to be seen. That was only what he had expected; but he had also been told that the Marquise, accompanied, as usual, by Madame Blanc, had been out for two hours--and that he had not expected.

"Did she divine I would be in evidence this morning?" Then he glanced in a pier gla.s.s and grimaced. "Gone out with that plain Madame Blanc, when she might have had a treat--an hour with me!"

While he stood there both the Marquise and her companion appeared, walking briskly. Madame Blanc, a stout woman of thirty-five, was rather breathless.

"My dear Marquise, you do not walk, you fly," she gasped, halting on the steps.

"You poor dear!" said the Marquise, patting her kindly on the shoulder. "I know you are faint for want of your coffee," and at the same time her strong young arms helped the panting attendant mount the steps more quickly.

Once within the hall Madame Blanc dropped into the chair nearest the door, while the Marquise swept into the reception room and hastily to a window fronting on the street.

"How foolish of me," she breathed aloud. "How my heart beats!"

"Allow me to prescribe," said Dumaresque, stepping from behind the screen of the curtain, and smiling at her.

She retreated, her hands clasped over her breast, her eyes startled; then meeting his eyes she began to laugh a little nervously.