The Rising Storm

startling vividness. As she heard them crossing the cobbled yard below the window she jumped to her feet and ran across to him. He opened his arms and with a little sob she fell into them.

After a few breathless kisses she drew back and cried: 'Say you love me! Say you love me! Please, Roje I implore you to!'

'Indeed I do, my beautiful Isabella,' he replied, kissing her afresh. And he meant it, for after the preceding day's scene in the coach he had known that further resistance was useless, and the violence of her passion had now communicated itself to him.

'You swear it?' she demanded.

'I swear it! Surely you must have seen that for days I have been fighting against the impulse to make love to you ? Your sweetness has utterly overcome me; but I feared that to show my feelings openly could only bring you grief.'

'Oh thank God! thank God!' she exclaimed, ignoring his last few words. 'Never have I felt so shamed as after yesterday. What must you have thought of me? Yet I vow that far from being accustomed to behaving so I have always despised women who made advances to men.'

'I know your mind too well ever to have thought otherwise,' he assured her quickly. 'How could anyone be constantly in your company for a week without realizing that your standards of conduct are as high as your person is beautiful ?'

'But Roje, I have never felt for any man as I do for you,' she hurried on. 'The very touch of your hand makes me deliriously happy, yet terrifies me. How I shall bring myself to support Don Diego after this I cannot think.'

'Don Diego?' he repeated.

'Yes. I have said nothing of it because each time I have broached the question of love or marriage you have turned the conversation to some other topic. But I am going to Naples to be married.'

'Do you—do you regard your fiance' with affection?'

'How could I ? I do not even know him. He is my father's choice for me. I am twenty-two and should have been married long ere this, but Madame Marie Antoinette begged my father to let me remain with her until this spring; then he insisted that I must return to take my rightful place in Spanish society.'

'This Don Diego, I suppose, is a gentleman of ancient lineage?' Roger asked a little bitterly.

She nodded. 'He is El Conde Diego Sidonia y Ulloa. He has great estates in Castile and on his uncle's death he will inherit a dukedom. His father was one of the nobles who assisted Don Carlos to conquer Naples, so he also has estates there and in Sicily. He has lived in Naples most of his life and is one of King Ferdinand's Chamberlains. Even my father considers that a better match could hardly be found for me.

'What sort of a man is he?'

'He is just under thirty years of age, and said to be handsome.'

'Mayhap you will fall in love with him, then.' The second Roger had spoken he could have bitten off his tongue. The remark was not made cynically but it might easily be taken so, and in any case it sug­gested a lightness that was out of keeping with the moment. To his mingled relief and distress she took it literally, and confessed:

'I had hoped to. If I could have done that I might have brought him some happiness, or at least derived some pleasure from being his Condesa. But how can I ever do so now?'

He took her hands and pressed them. 'Oh, Isabella, my poor precious, I would not have brought this willingly upon you for the world.'

' 'Tis not your fault, Roje. Neither is it mine. And I would not have had things otherwise if I could.'

'I tremble with delight to hear you say it. Yet I know myself to be terribly unworthy of such love as yours.'

'Why should you think that?' she asked seriously.

'Because I have loved much and—and been far from faithful,' he replied with an effort.

She smiled. 'Men are rarely faithful, That at least I know about them, so I count it no crime in you. But in all other ways you are different from any man I have ever met. Perhaps that is partly because you are English. If so the women of England are monstrous fortunate. My own countrymen are deserving of admiration, for they are upright, kind and chivalrous; but they consider it beneath their dignity to talk to any female as an equal. Frenchmen are clever and amusing but they are rarely sincere and where a woman is concerned think only in terms of her seduction. But you combine gallantry with gentleness; you show no trace of condescension in discussing with me matters upon which a woman's opinion is supposed to be worthless, and treat me with the gay camaraderie that you would use towards another man. 'Tis that in you, more even that your handsome looks, that I have come to love.'

All too late Roger saw where he had erred. If he had displayed only an amused tolerance towards her intellectual leanings, or, better still, attempted to take liberties with her at the first opportunity, he would have repelled her and, most probably, nipped her embryo passion for him in the bud; but in the very method by which he had sought to do so he had defeated his own end.

Yet, now that his scruples had been willy-nilly overcome, he was much too human to allow his earlier misgivings to mar his delight in the love that she was pouring out so freely. Once more he took her in his arms, and for a while they mingled blissful sighs and kisses.

It was not until the time for the return of the church party drew near that he made one final effort to save them both from the slippery path they were treading. Putting her gently from him he said:

'Listen, Isabella, my love. I am but a gentleman of small fortune, and we both know that your father would not even consider a request from me for your hand.'

'Alas,' she sighed. 'In that I fear you right beyond all question.'

'Then had we not best use the chirurgeon's knife upon our passion before it begets a lasting obsession? That we have seen not a sign of de Roubec these past eight days can be taken as a fair indication that he has abandoned his designs upon the Queen's letter; and I am now sufficiently recovered to travel on my own. If you tell the Senora Poeblar that I am carrying a Government despatch, that will be reason enough to excuse my leaving you here and hastening on to Marseilles. For both our sakes I urge you to let me take post-chaise this afternoon.'

'Nay, Roje Nay!' she cried, flinging herself upon him again. 'I beg you to do no such thing. We have but another week, or ten days at the most. My dear Senora is no fool and although she has said nothing of it I feel certain that she guesses already what is in the wind. Yet she is too fond of me to prove difficult, provided we are circumspect. Between here and Marseilles we can snatch many stolen moments alone together. For me they will be memories beyond price to treasure in the years to come. I implore you not to rob me of them.'

To that sweet appeal there could be but one answer, and Roger made it with a fervour equal to her own. 'So be it then, my love. When the time comes, part we must. But until then we will give no thought to the future.'

At eleven o'clock the party set off as planned, to sleep that night at the little town of Fix. The country continued to be picturesque and hilly, so on half a dozen occasions the Senora, Quetzal and Maria got out to walk; but Isabella used her feigned indisposition as an excuse to remain with Roger. Whenever they were alone they seized the oppor­tunity to nestle in an embrace in the warm semi-darkness of the coach, and even when the others were with them in it they now secretly held hands.

That evening at Fix they learned fuller details of the momentous first meeting of the States General. The preceding Monday had been devoted to a solemn spectacle. The deputies had mustered at the Church of Notre Dame and, headed by the clergy of Versailles, marched to the Church of St. Louis to hear Mass and ask the blessing of God on their deliberations. The Third Estate, clad in humble black, had been placed in the van of the procession, while the King and Queen, sur­rounded by the Princes of the Blood, in gorgeous robes and ablaze with diamonds, had brought up its rear. The choice of so drab a uniform for the representatives of the people had been governed by ancient pre­cedent, but it had been much resented. Many of them were men of substance who normally dressed with some richness, so they considered it a deliberate slight that they should be forced to appear like supplicants in contrast to the nobles and higher clergy, who followed them decked out in all the splendour of rainbow-hued silks, satins and velvets.

The entire population of Versailles, numbering 60,000, had turned out to see the procession, and the crowd had been swollen to more than twice that number by great contingents from Paris and visitors from every province