Yes, there by the huge fireplace was the same quaintly carved
chair where she always sat. Ah, those delicious evenings when one was
five-and-twenty. For the moment I should not have been surprised if she had
suddenly taken shape before my eyes, in the old seat, the slim, girlish
woman in her white dress, her hands folded in her lap, her quiet eyes
gazing dreamily into the red fire, a subtile air of distinction in her
whole posture.... She would be old now, I suppose. Would she? Ah no, she
was not one of the women who grow old.... I caught up the thread of my
host's discourse just as he was pointing it with a sharp rap upon one of
the most time-stained panels.
'Behind there,' he remarked, with pardonable pride, 'is the secret passage
where the Duc d'Alva was assassinated.'
I smiled apologetically.
'Yes,' I said, 'I know it. I should explain perhaps--my excuse for
troubling you was not merely historic curiosity. I have more personal
associations with this room. I spent some charming hours in it a great many
years ago-' and for the moment I had forgotten that I was nearly fifty.
'Ah,' he said, with interest, 'you know the late people, the Fontaines.'
'No,' I said, 'I am afraid I have never heard of them.
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