THE UNSPEAKABLE GENTLEMAN
rooms, while the rain rotted the planking. It was not strange that its owners had left it, for I can imagine no more mournful or desolate spot. Our own house, three miles away, was its nearest neighbor, and scarcely a congenial one. Around it was nothing but rain sogged meadows that scarcely rose above the salt marshes that ran to the dunes where the Atlantic was beating.
As I stared grimly ahead, I could picture her there behind me, the wind whipping the color to her cheeks and playing with her hair, her eyes bright and gay in the half-light. Save for the steady plodding of the horse, it was very still. I fancied that she had leaned nearer, that her shoulder was touching mine, that I could feel her breath en my cheek. Then she spoke, and her voice was almost a whisper.
"It was good of you to take me with you," she said.
"Surely, Mademoiselle," I replied, "You did not think that I would leave you?"
"I should, if I had been you," she answered, "I was rude to you, Monsieur, and unjust to you this morning. You see I did not know."
"You did not know?"
"That the son would be as brave and as
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