"It is in the hope of meeting him," said d.i.c.k, "that I am now on the way to Paris."

"Then you have a pleasure very near at hand," said the Count.

"I trust it is near at hand," said d.i.c.k. "It may be delayed by another matter that must intervene,--also a pleasure."

"You speak and look as if it were a matter of some doubt or difficulty,"

said the Count. "If I can be of a.s.sistance--"

"I thank you, monsieur, but it is a matter in which the aid of Monsieur l'Abbe would be more to the point."

"Command me, monsieur," put in the Abbe. "My aid is for whoever asks it."

"I begin to understand," said the Count, with a kindly smile. "The lady in the carriage--"

"Precisely," said d.i.c.k. "Monsieur le Comte is very penetrating."

"Oh, no, very stupid, usually," said the Count. "But at present there is a reason why my perception is keen wherever a love affair or a marriage is concerned."

"Then it is true, as the toast of Monsieur l'Abbe indicated, that you also are about to achieve happiness? We have to felicitate each other!"

"Yes, it is true. And so great is my happiness that I would have the whole world happy at the same time. I was saying this to the Abbe only an hour ago, and wishing for opportunities to make others similarly happy, when, behold, the good G.o.d grants my wish by sending you to my door. You would have the aid of the Abbe, you say? Very well. I use the power I have over the Abbe's actions, through his affection for me, to compel his aid in your behalf."

"But that is not necessary," said the Abbe. "You know I dote upon runaway matches. I need not apologize, Monsieur Wetheral,--one can easily see, by the circ.u.mstances, that yours is a runaway match. It is therefore a love match."

"You are right, Monsieur l'Abbe. The young lady was to have been sacrificed, according to the custom that prevails everywhere but in my country. Her horror at the match arranged for her would have distressed you, gentlemen, if you could have witnessed it."

"I am sure it would have distressed me," said the Count. "But it is now averted, and need be thought of no more. The Abbe shall perform your marriage before you leave my roof, under which you are safe from all pursuit."

"Imagine Monsieur le Comte aiding and abetting a runaway marriage a year ago!" said the Abbe, with a roguish smile.

"The Abbe is right, young gentleman. A year ago I should no more have thought of violating a universal custom of our civilization than of joining a conspiracy against the King. But a year ago I had not loved. I knew not what it might be for a man to see the woman he loved given into the possession of another. I now consider love as having first right. It is to be obeyed against all other considerations. Moreover, if I now do Love a service in aiding this match of yours, Love will owe me a favor.

It may repay me by--giving me--" The Count ceased talking, and sighed.

"Monsieur le Comte has a strange fancy he does not receive back as much love as he bestows," explained the Abbe, gently. "He does not allow for the lady's youth, which makes her naturally shy and undemonstrative in his presence."

"I am sure there can be no reason for his fancy," said d.i.c.k, glancing with genuine admiration at the singularly n.o.ble and gentle countenance of his host.

"And if there were," said the Abbe, noting that the Count still looked pensive, "what woman's heart could continue long unsusceptible to such munificence? What think you of this chateau, with its princely parks, as a wedding present, monsieur,--a little surprise, after the jewels, the house in Paris, and the other trinkets shall have been surveyed? Do you not think that, if anything be wanting to make the lady's heart respond, it will be supplied when she is told that she is mistress of this house, which, as Monsieur le Comte has learned, she has coveted since her childhood?"

d.i.c.k's thought that the Abbe knew less of how women are const.i.tuted than abbes are supposed to know, was suddenly driven out by another thought,--that it was strange two young ladies should both have coveted this chateau since childhood.

"You now understand," said the Count to d.i.c.k, "my desire to remain unknown as the purchaser of this place. I would not have the news reach her ears and spoil the surprise. And I congratulate myself on being here, superintending the last alterations, and on having brought the Abbe with me as company; for that your love match may be somewhat facilitated through us. Come, Abbe, rejoice with me that we are enabled to serve love, and to baffle those who would do it violence! What greater crime can there be than to force a girl to a marriage of interest? Your rival, monsieur, will deserve his discomfiture! I should really like to witness his chagrin. To conspire selfishly, with a young girl's natural protectors, against her happiness! Yes, it pleases me to think how crestfallen he will be! Monsieur, you have drunk already to my future countess; let us drink now to the lady whom the Abbe shall unite to you in this house at whatever time she may select!"

The toast was drunk heartily, and d.i.c.k, letting his eyes rove lazily among the many signs of wealth and luxurious comfort in the room, inwardly contrasted the possible future of the girl whose fate he was to take in charge, with that of her whose destiny was to be in the keeping of the rich and generous Count.

"To think that her house should serve the romantic purpose of a runaway love match!" said the Count, with a smile. "It will amuse Collette."

d.i.c.k turned pale. "Collette!" he echoed. "You said Collette!"

"That is the first name of the lady who is to be my wife," explained the Count. "Why does it startle you?"

"Oh, because I have heard that name so recently. My own fiancee has a friend of that name,--a schoolmate, at a convent somewhere near Montreuil."

"'Tis the very same!" cried the Count, with great pleasure. "To think, Abbe, that we should be of service to one of her friends! That surely will delight her!"

"But," faltered d.i.c.k, "is it certain? There may be two of that name at the same convent. The one of whom I speak has left it very recently, with her aunt--"

"It is she!" said the Count, more and more rejoiced at corroborative details. "She ought to be at this moment at Abbeville or Amiens, on the way to Paris to be married. She will pa.s.s this house and look up at it, wishing it were hers, as she has so often done, and never dreaming I am here making it ready for her! Yes, there can be no doubt, it is the same Collette,--Mademoiselle de Sarton!"

When d.i.c.k was shown to a round chamber in a turret-shaped corner of the chateau that night, he asked for pen, ink, and paper, saying he always wrote his letters late. By the light of a small candelabra, and after much thought and many beginnings, he composed two doc.u.ments before he went to bed.

At earliest dawn he dressed and went down-stairs, told the only servant he found up that he was going for a short walk, and left with the servant the two letters, each to be taken to the chamber of its intended recipient. Then d.i.c.k hastened to the auberge where his horses and postilion had pa.s.sed the night.

One letter was to Collette, and read as follows:

"MADEMOISELLE:

"You are now in your own house, which you have so long wished to possess. Its master, the n.o.blest, kindest, and handsomest gentleman in the world, with boundless will and means to make you happy, is he from whom I, a worthless adventurer with neither possessions nor prospects, would have taken you, in my ignorance and folly. You should thank G.o.d for your escape and for giving you a husband such as Monsieur le Comte, whose years have but added to his graces and his merits. I have written him to such effect that he will understand all, and that, when he comes to greet you, nothing will be necessary on your part but for you to give him your hand, and offer your brow for the caress which a princess might be rejoiced and honored to receive."

The other letter was to the Count himself, and, whatever it contained, there is plentiful record, in the family history of the Counts de Rollincourt, to show that it accomplished its purpose. By the time the aunt of Mlle. de Sarton reached the newly bought estate of the Count de Rollincourt, in mad search of her fugitive niece, servants were in waiting at the road to conduct her to the chateau, where her amazement to find the Count in possession was promptly doubled on seeing Collette installed as mistress,--for, if the Count's little surprise was spoiled, his plan of having the Abbe Foyard perform an impromptu marriage was carried out, after all.

Meanwhile, long before this happy issue of affairs, d.i.c.k Wetheral had roused the cowed postilion and set out on horseback towards Paris, leaving the carriage to be taken back when the postilion should return.

Dismissing this postilion at the first post, he took new horses, and, riding all day, despite weather and bad roads, he arrived at evening at St. Denis, and dismounted at the princ.i.p.al inn,--tired, hungry, and bespattered with mud. Before going to bed, he sent for a servant to give his clothes a thorough cleaning, that he might in the morning make his triumphal entry into Paris in a state of attire befitting so important an event. When his head rested on the pillow, it was with a pleasant thrill at the realization that his road, roundabout as it had been, had indeed led him to the very portals of Paris, and that it would take him across those portals on the early morrow.

He little knew in what manner he was to cross those portals, how he was to pa.s.s through the city yet see it not, and what a vast loop his road was to describe, over strange perils and through wild heart-burnings, ere it should land him in Paris with free feet and open eyes.

CHAPTER XVI.

PASTORAL AND TRAGEDY.

The morrow, March 2d, was Sunday, and with it came a change to soft and sunny weather. As d.i.c.k soon learned, this was a day to bring Parisians out into the fields; a day on which the people would go to church and then to pleasure, in their gayest clothes; a day on which a stranger entering Paris in d.i.c.k's circ.u.mstances would be out of harmony with the general picture. Moreover, gladdened by the unexpected foretaste of spring, St. Denis itself looked charming. Therefore, d.i.c.k decided to postpone the long-antic.i.p.ated entrance till Monday.

He went in the morning to the famous abbey church where the kings of France were buried; and after that he walked to the banks of the Seine, whose waters sparkled in the sunlight or flowed green beneath the trees along the edge. Doing as he saw some others do, d.i.c.k hired a boat, with a boatman, and started to row up the Seine,--that is to say, southward, towards St. Ouen and the more immediate environs of Paris.

Keeping to the right or eastern bank of the river, the boat had reached a place between an island and a terraced park, when it was suddenly run into by a larger craft, which contained a pleasure party rowing down the river. d.i.c.k's boat was upset, and himself thrown out in such a way that he had to dive to save his head from collision. He made a few powerful strokes under water, to put himself clear of the boats, and when he came to the surface he found that his boatman had been taken aboard by the pleasure party and was proceeding down the river, the smaller boat in tow. There was evidently no intention, on any one's part, to pick up d.i.c.k.

"French politeness, in the lower cla.s.ses, is so thick on the top that there's none left at bottom," thought d.i.c.k, thus abandoned; and then he struck out for the n.o.ble park that rose on the right bank of the river.

Thanks to the evergreens among its trees, and to its gra.s.s streaked here and there with sunshine, this park had even now a verdant appearance, and it was made inviting by little pavilions and summer-houses here and there, and by glimpses of a charming chateau in its midst.

d.i.c.k had no sooner clambered ash.o.r.e and risen to let the water drip from his clothes, than a slender girl, eleven years old, came out of a summer-house, carrying a cane, as was the fashion of the time, and accompanied on one side by a footman who held a parasol over her, and on the other by a large, bounding black dog. She had an extremely intelligent face, the hair turning back from a thoughtful forehead. Her manner and, as d.i.c.k soon found out, her speech were those of a woman twice her age.

"Monsieur has been emulating Leander," said this young lady of eleven, the instant she was within speaking distance of d.i.c.k, one glance of her fine eyes having enabled her to estimate him to her own satisfaction.

Surprised at such a speech, made with such nonchalance by such a child, d.i.c.k gazed for a moment in silence. She bore his gaze with perfect sang-froid. So he said, smiling: