“You are late, Count Raphael,” said a tall lady, presiding over a little gathering of men and women in the upper hall of the Castle of Collioure. The Duchess of Err was a Spanish lady who had dwelt some time at the Court of Paris in the time of Francis II. and Mary of Scotland. And ever since she had posed as one who could innovate if she would, so that the ancient customs of Spain would not know themselves again when she had done with them. As, however, she took good care to keep this carefully from King Philip’s ears, nothing very remarkable came of it.

But, nevertheless, the Duchess of Err had a certain repute for originality and daring, which served her as well then as at any other period of the world’s history. Her husband accompanied her, but as that diplomatist “abode in his breaches” and confined his intercourse with those around to asking the major-domo once a day what there was for dinner, his influence on his wife was not great. His trouble was spoken of, leniently, as “a touch of the sun.”

“Our host comes from a rendezvous, doubtless,” put in the Countess Livia, with a bitter intention, glancing, as she did so, at a fair-haired girl with wide-open eyes who sat listless and very quiet at the seaward window. A priest, playing chess with a robust, country-faced man, looked up quickly from his ivory pieces. But the girl said nothing, and Raphael Llorient was left to answer for himself.

This he did by turning towards her who had not spoken, or even looked in his direction.

“Mademoiselle Valentine,” he said, “will you not defend a poor man who, having but one vineyard, must needs sometimes trim and graft with his own hands?”

Momentarily, the girl rested her great eyes, of the greenish amber of pressed clover honey, full upon him. Her face was faintly flushed like the blonde of meadow-sweet, but quite without pink in the cheeks. Her lips, however, were full, red, and more than a little scornful.

“The Lord of Collioure can surely please himself as to his comings and goings,” she said; “for the rest, is not my ghostly uncle here to confess him, if such be his need?”

“Valentine la Nina,” cried the Duchess, “is there nothing in the world that will make you curious? Only twenty-five, and reputed the fairest woman in Europe. Yet you have outlived the sin of Eve, your mother! It is an insult against the laws of your sex. What shall we do to her?”

“Make her confess to her uncle,” said the Countess Livia, who also never could forgive in any woman the offence-capital of beauty.

“My niece Valentine has her own spiritual adviser,” said the priest, looking up from his game, with a smile which had enough of curiosity in it to make up for his niece’s lack of it. “A Pope may, if he will, confess his nephews, but a poor Brother of the Society had better confide the cure of his relatives’ souls to the nearest village priest. Otherwise he might be suspect of conspiring against the good of the state. The regular clergy may steal horses, while a Jesuit may not even look over the wall!”

The ladies rose to say good-night. Like a careful host, Raphael took from the table a tall candelabra of two branches, in order to conduct them severally to the doors of their apartments. The Duchess of Err conveyed away her husband with her, holding up her long silken train with one hand and giving the ex-diplomat a push on before her with the other, as often as he needed it. The Duke had forgotten that he had once already partaken of supper, and craved another. He even shed a few tears. Yet he had his good points. His emotion showed a sympathetic nature, and besides, the ladies were there under his escort and protection. The Duchess said so, so it must be true. Meantime, however, she propelled him to bed.

The Countess Livia gave Raphael her hand to kiss, saying at the same time, “To-morrow I will find your village maid for you!”

On the way the Duchess divided her attention between making sure that her husband took the right turning in the long corridors of the castle of Collioure, and reproaching Raphael for not building a new and elegant chateau “after the manner of Chenancieux or Cour Chevernay light, dainty, fit for a lady’s jewel-case.”

At this Raphael laughed, and, holding the candelabra high in his hand, begged them to look up and mark upon the lintels of the narrow windows the splintering of the cannon shots and the grooves made by the inrush of the arbalast bolts.

“My Lady Duchess,” he answered, “I would be glad to do your bidding first, if I had the security; second, if I had the river; third, if I had the money. But I have no money, alas, save what I gather hardly enough from my vines and the flocks on the hillside yonder (see that faithful man guarding my interests I never had a herder like him). Besides, I am here between three fires, or it may be four our good King Philip, the step-father of his people, the King of France, the Bearnais, and, may be before long, the Holy League also. Bullets may soon be whistling again at Collioure, as they have whistled before, and I would rather that they encountered these ten-foot walls, and mortar of excellent shell-lime, than the moulded sugar and plaster of these ladies’ toys along the Loire!”

“Ah, you will not move with the times!” cried the Duchess, propelling her husband severely into his dressing-room to make sure that he, at least, moved with the times a little faster even “if you had been as long in France as I well, but there I forgive you. You are a good Catholic, and a subject of King Philip. Therefore you cannot help it, and our lord the King sees to it that you have something else to do with your money than to build castles wherein to entertain ladies. Sea-castles for the English robber dogs to batter with shot, and land-castles to hold down the Hollander frontier, are much more to his liking!”

At this point the Duke of Err created a diversion by turning in his tracks at the sight of the dark sleeping-chamber, through the open window of which came the light sap and clatter of the sea on the beach far below.

“My supper my supper!” he muttered; “I want to go to the supper-room!”

The Duchess was not a lady of lengthy patience, and domestic manners were simple in those days. She merely gave the ex-diplomatist a sound box on the ear, and bade him get into bed at once.

“It takes all his family just like that before the age of fifty,” she said; “I am a woman much to be pitied, with such a babe on my hands. Good-night, Don Raphael; you must build me that chateau to comfort me as soon as the wars are over ”

“When God wills, and the purse fills!” said the Lord of Collioure, bowing to the ground.

A little farther along the corridor they came to the chambers of the Countess Livia and the niece of the Jesuit doctor. The Countess, with her eyes on her companion, gave Raphael her fingers to kiss, but Valentine la Nina swept past both with the slightest bow.

“No man can serve two masters,” said the Countess, smiling after her with meaning; “you must give up your shepherdess!”

“What do you mean?” Raphael demanded, in a low tone.

“My brother Paul will tell you to-morrow, when he comes back from Perpignan. He, too, was on the hillside to-day near to the valley ”

She paused long enough to give him time to ask the question.

“What valley?” said Raphael, in complete apparent forgetfulness.

“The Valley of the Consolation! An excellent name!” answered the Countess Livia, with a low laugh of malice.

She turned and went within. She found Valentine la Nina standing by the open window looking out upon the sea. Her large, amber-coloured eyes were now black and mysterious. She did not show the least trace of emotion. She was as one walking in a dream, or perhaps, rather, like one upheld by a will not her own.

The Countess Livia looked at the girl awhile, and then, with a vexed stamp of her foot, she pulled Valentine round, so that the light of the lamp fell on her face.

“Oh!” she cried, “was there ever a woman like you? As the Duchess said, you care for nothing. You are the most beautiful girl in the world, and it is nothing to you. No wonder a dairy-maid can supplant you. Why, if I had a tenth of your beauty I would have kings and emperors at my feet!”

Valentine la Nina looked at her without smiling, or the least show of feeling.

“It is likely,” she said; “you are free, I am bound. When I receive my orders, I shall obey them.”

“You are a strange creature,” cried the Countess. “Orders who is to command you? Bound what chains are there that a suitable marriage will not break?”

“Those!” said Valentine la Nina, opening her robe at the throat, and showing to the astonished eyes of the Countess Livia the black crucifix and the hair shirt of discipline.