T

O be sure it was very picturesque, this bit of Breton coast: seaward stretched blue water, edged with white foam; landward, green level spaces, broken by lines of tall poplar trees. Along the tidal river colored sails went forever up and down be yond the grass; and the quaint village where masts moved constantly beyond the houses, and where white-capped peasant women with comely faces—“as Irish as me own," said Mrs. Faunce-gathered about the old fountain in the market-place with their copper pots and pans, was just what she had expected. No one could deny the charm of the place, yet Mrs. Faunce was distinctly bored. The dinners were all that they had said, daintily served, delicious, with such soups, such entrées, such salads, such sauce suprême as will be found nowhere else on any shore outside of dreamland. There was no fault to find with the little hotel, gray as the gnarled and jagged rocks that lay to westward; every kind of comfort was at your beck and call, under the masterful management of Mère Fouqué, with her white Breton caps, her Breton serving maids in wooden shoes, and her Parisian chef. It combined, the Hotel Merlin, in all its details, those characteristics of subtlety and simplicity that belong to all high

art.

But the wandering old Irish lady, student of humankind, redresser of human wrongs, was tired of it all. She had come to the shore for mental rest, she who abhorred mental rest; for physical repose, she who had no need of it, and who refused to admit, even to herself, the twinges of rheumatism about the aging bones that were so much older than her spirit. She haunted the salon, impressive in her attire of more than decent black, for her bizarre pilgrim costume of taffeta petticoat, nondescript waist, and head-dress of lace was discarded on the occasions when she wished to make appar

ent the simple truth that she was a lady. She conversed with the few guests in her fluid French with its touch of brogue, dozed after luncheon, wondering sleepily about the two people who passed so often, mother and daughter evidently, and as evidently English, the elder lady having that military look of being ready for battle which only the British general and the British matron wear to perfection, the daughter following with listless step as if in a dream. Mrs. Faunce watched them and yawned. Who was it, anyway, who had told her of this secluded spot? Was it M. Mostet of Julien's? She would get even with him! Did he think that she would care for the bluesmocked goatherd who came driving his flock gayly before him from door to door cvery night and milking in the presence of his customer? Oh, yes, she loved the pastoral thought of the goatherd with his flute and his carved staff, but, when you were near, the goats smelled so vilely of goat!

"Tis no nymph nor yet dryad I am," said Mrs. Faunce to herself, "to dance to that music."

Perhaps it was Herr Bernhard who had advised her to come. Just like a sentimental German to rave about these bareheaded, blue-aproned, red-petticoated wom.cn washing in the pools. It was none of this superficial picturesqueness that she wanted, but share in some bit of emotion, ripe from the heart's core, for to the old lady, insatiable of experience, the only real sauce suprême was human life.

Nothing in Maramol really appealed to her save two inn signs, one, "Au Bon Diable," the other, "A la Réunion des Amis," and she gazed longingly at both, missing the friendly and intimate laughter to which she was accustomed, the chatter, the keen and affectionate gibes. The hours were long between dawn and dawn; the little barelegged French children strolling with their nurses across the sands to eastward looked remote; nothing happened in the ten long days

whose hours rippled away along the shore, and, the old Irish lady was wistful and lonely. Life seemed very far away! She even thought longingly of her family, of that daughter-English now since she had been foolish enough to marry an Englishmanin her stately home, and of the formal and unendurable ways that went on behind the tall park gates.

"If me daughter hadn't taken it upon herself to inherit me less amiable traits; if she hadn't been as obstinate as meself, we might have been happy together," mused Mrs. Faunce. The grandchildren must be growing up; the little lad, Jack-could it be that he was almost a man by this time? The dark head had been far below her shoulder when she had escaped from a life that stifled her, and had become a free lance in the larger world. She actually yearned, though she would not have confessed it, to see little Jack once more, and to find him little.

Hidden in a cleft of the rocks one day she heard the waters lap and watched the waves wane; sand-pipers hopped near on slender legs, and white-winged gulls flew low, but none of these things pleased Mrs. Faunce. She looked long and hard at the ocean, then lifted her fist and shook it in the face of the vasty deep.

"Curse on you for an unsociable companion," she said grimly. "They talk of the whisperin' waves! Here I've sat, two hours and a half by me watch, and never a word have you spoken."

She paused, listening, then beat a tattoo upon the rocks.

"Sure, if you speak, 'tis English you speak with your sulky voice, and never a word of Irish. Come now, a bit of the brogue to warm me old heart!"

Here she caught sight of two people strolling across the sand, and, as they began to climb the rocks, she recognized them as the mother and daughter who had often caught her eye in the past ten days. The girl was fair to look at, except for an expression of rebellious sadness which robbed her face of its natural charm. She toiled behind her vigorous parent with a hurt, dragging step, like that of a wounded soldier. They passed, not saying a word.

'Any more than the sea," murmured Mrs. Faunce; then, just beyond a tall rock that concealed the old lady, the mother halted abruptly.

VOL. L.-61

"I must go back to the villa for a minute. Sit down here, Gladys, and do not stir until I come back."

The girl was left alone, her fair hair and pure profile silhouetted against the blue sky, and something in the drooping figure made Mrs. Faunce aware, for the first time, of the pathos of this rippling, gentle sea, and this coast, wearing forever on its desolate rocks that sad expression of looking northward. Suddenly the girl's whole manner changed, and she flung out her arms toward the water with a passionate gesture of appeal.

"Hal," she said softly, with a little hurt, inarticulate cry, "Hal!" The slender fig ure was quivering with grief and longing. Mrs. Faunce, watching unobserved, felt a kind of awe, for it was as if she had seen a bit of inert clay suddenly smitten with the flame of human life. The face which had been as a pallid mask glowed suddenly into beauty with the hurt and the joy of love. The old lady sat very quiet, with shining eyes, and the blood beat warmly once more within her.

"He's over the water in England,” she murmured, nodding to herself, "and there's trouble enough for some reason."

When the mother reappeared and led her daughter away over the rocks, Mrs. Faunce fastened her eyes on the erect, tweed-clad figure of the older woman, and watched her vigorous step.

"All English muscles work well," she said to herself, "except those of the heart." It was plain that there was tragedy here, and that this all-too-energetic woman was the maker of it; why else were the girl's footsteps so closely guarded by rock and sand and roadway? The lonely shore became suddenly full of interest for the old lady, as her keen flair for human story joyously recognized a new trail. That night she put back into her purse the bank-notes she had counted out for Mère Fouqué, for she had meant to go back to Paris to

morrow.

"Jeanne D'Arc," said Mrs. Faunce to the dark-haired Breton peasant who came thumping softly upstairs every morning with a little tray upon which rested a huge bowl of delicious café au lait, a monstrous table-spoon, and two small rolls, "Jeanne D'Arc, who are the two people who pass here several times a day, mother and daughter?"

Jeanne D'Arc, whose real name was Margot, stood with arms akimbo, smiling a wide smile.

"Say paw," she answered.

Mrs.

"The young lady," continued Faunce, "has beautiful golden hair.” "Ah," breathed Jeanne D'Arc, "and there is always the mother?" "Always!"

'Mad," said the girl, tapping her forehead, "the young one, else why always the mother?"

"Nonsense!" cried the old lady. "Who are they? Where do they come from? Where do they go to?"

"Say paw!" said Jeanne D'Arc, "but they go to Madame surely sees them going into the gates of Villa Camelot, close by?" The old lady shook her head.

"But yes!" cried the girl. "Hundreds of times I have seen them. Look, Madame; it is but the throw of a little stone to their windows."

She drew aside the curtains of an eastern window, and there, truly enough, beyond a high wall, and beyond two slender poplar trees, appeared a building whose gray sides, long windows, and picturesque roof, hardly noticed before, became suddenly significant. "Jeanne D'Arc," said Madame, fumbling successfully with an old-fashioned netted silk purse, "bring me the name of the English lady who lives at Villa Camelot."

That evening Jeanne D'Arc appeared again, this time with a bit of paper, which she presented triumphantly.

"But the servants are all English and dumb! They have no speech at all!" she announced. "It was the postman."

It was the same postman who, the next day, carried away from Hotel Merlin an unusual number of letters, some directed to England, some to Paris, and one to Château Miraban in Britanny, and Mrs. Faunce waited, watched, and listened.

"But why," demanded Jeanne D'Arc, as she was making the old lady's bed, "why, if somebody is not mad, do they keep the villa gates always locked?"

"Do they?" asked Mrs. Faunce, who knew it perfectly well. From the eastern window she was looking intently at the Villa Camelot, where, upon a window ledge of the second floor, a girlish head was bowed upon folded arms with an air of hopeless

abandonment that brought the ever-ready mist to the old lady's eyes.

No mist, however, was dense enough to veil her keen vision, and a hundred and one things about the Villa Camelot which the tenant supposed were strictly secret were known to this elderly neighbor. That the mistress of the house never allowed any one but herself to see the postman, if she could help it, was evident, for she always, even in the rain, waited for him at the villa gate. Mrs. Faunce even knew something that the vigilant lady of the villa did not know, to wit, that the kindly gray-haired maid, on one of the few occasions when she was permitted to watch for the mail, hastily whipped something into her pocket, and that, a few minutes later, the face of the girl at the honeysuckle-bordered window grew radiant as she stooped to kiss an unopened letter. It was not hard to read the story of unhappy love that was going on; it was clear that mother and daughter held heated debates, for the sound of them, if not the words, floated over the wall, and more than once the girl was seen, with her back braced firmly against the window embrasure, making remarks of undoubted firmness.

One day Mrs. Faunce met her mysterious young neighbor in the quaint cemetery among the weather-beaten slabs that marked the resting-places of the peasant dead. Bees were murmuring over the green spaces, and near the late yellow roses, that grew about the gray stones, and all was peace, for the soldierlike mother, who felt the need of much exercise, was marching up and down outside the wall. The girl was tracing with her finger a lichengrown inscription upon a rough granite cross. As she heard footsteps she looked up; these two had passed each other so often that a silent friendliness of kindly glances had been established between the old lady with the gay, aged face and this girl with despairing eyes. Mrs. Faunce gave one swift glance toward the cemetery gates, and then held out her arms with: 'Come, dear, and tell me all about it! Where is he?" She was one of those rare personages who recognize an opportunity when it comes. The girl, alarmed, started away like a frightened bird, then crept back, just beyond the other's reach. She did not want to be touched, apparently, by any hand but his.

"I did," said Mrs. Faunce, dashing away a tear with a mitten-clad hand.

The girl looked at her steadfastly, with that longing to read the writing of the lines, the very hieroglyphics of life, that one sees often in the faces of the young in looking on the old.

"Were you happy?" whispered Gladys. "Whiles, and whiles not. To be happy always is not the human lot. Surely monotony of any kind would fall short of happiness; 'tis that that's the matter with the idea of heaven."

"It would be wonderful," breathed the girl, "to be happy even for a minute."

"Me poor darlin'!" cried Mrs. Faunce, "tell me all about it"; but the girl's finger was on her lip, and her eyes were fixed on the cemetery gate.

"I must go," she said hurriedly. "Go on," said the strange old lady; "but remember, dear, I'm your friend, and 'tis me intention to help you."

She looked wistfully after the young girl as she went away, past a gray inscription: "Que Dieu augmente sa joie!" and the old lady murmured over and over in behalf of the living the carven prayer for the dead. Many a one had she known to whom love was much, but never before one to whom it was all, who was dedicate, soul and body, every nerve and fibre edged with flame.

It was perhaps ten days after the letters had gone, and five or six after answers had been despatched to the replies that Jeanne D'Arc brought Mrs. Faunce a black-bordered card, upon which was engraved the name of Mrs. Reginald Lucas. After a fitting delay, Mrs. Faunce descended to the salon, dignified, bespangled, trailing after her a long black gown, and holding her head high in the grand manner that was all her own. The military mother, no longer

teous; not so her thoughts, if the truth were known, for her first one was: "Tis a cruel mouth you've got, for all your smiling." Wheedling, but tactful, she made innumerable inquiries without seeming to do so, and this is what she learned from the preoccupied mother whose anxious eyes kept turning toward Villa Camelot. She was here for the sake of her daughter Gladys, who was far from well, and they were leading the quietest possible life. The child was suffering from a complicated disorder in regard to which expert opinion had pronounced itself uncertain; she was subject to sudden seizures, and had to be constantly watched.

"Now that is where I could help you, if you would permit me," cried Mrs. Faunce. "I've nothing to do, and I'm eating me heart out with the loneliness of it all. I'm fond of the young." She got no promise from her guest, but hope that she might share the guardianship of the girl was high within her as Mrs. Lucas stalked away.

"Actin' the part of affectionate mother," muttered Mrs. Faunce, "as well as if she'd been trained for it on the stage. I can't help thinkin' of the rehearsals."

On the days following the old lady waited with some impatience. Lonely walks and lonelier drives by shining, shivering silver poplars in the sad, cool air of early fall failed to divert her mind from its purpose. Yet she got small chance to carry out her plans, and she wondered if this inability to help meant that she was growing old. Life responded usually more readily to her touch. Once, in a brief talk with the frightened girl, reluctantly permitted by Mamma, who was vainly trying to speak the Breton dialect with the postman, she got a bit of information about the lover. Hal was young too, only twenty, but they had cared a lifetime, or at least two years, having met her first season in London. The trouble?