duchess told you how I happen to be here? How, when you disappeared from
Paris long ago--with my ambition crushed, and nothing left to me but
my old trade of the fighter--I joined a secret expedition to help the
Chilian revolutionists? How I, who might have starved as a painter,
gained distinction as a partisan general, and was rewarded with an
envoyship in Europe? How I came to Paris to seek you? How I found that
even the picture--your picture, Helen--had been sold. How, in tracing it
here, I met the duchess at Deep Hill, and learning you were with her, in
a moment of impulse told her my whole story. How she told me that though
she was your best friend, you had never spoken of me, and how she begged
me not to spoil your chance of a good match by revealing myself, and so
awakening a past--which she believed you had forgotten. How she implored
me at least to let her make a fair test of your affections and your
memory, and until then to keep away from you--and to spare you, Helen;
and for your sake, I consented. Surely she has told this, NOW!"
"Not a word," said Helen blankly.
"Then you mean to say that if I had not haunted the park to-day, in the
hope of seeing you, believing that as you would not recognize me with
this artificial arm, I should not break my promise to her,--you would
not have known I was even living."
"No!--yes!--stay!" A smile broke over her pale face and left it rosy. "I
see it all now. Oh, Philip, don't you understand? She wanted only to try
us!"
There was a silence in the lonely wood, broken only by the trills of a
frightened bird whose retreat was invaded.
"Not now! Please! Wait! Come with me!"
The next moment she had seized Philip's left hand, and, dragging him
with her, was flying down the walk towards the house. But as they neared
the garden door it suddenly opened on the duchess, with her glasses to
her eyes, smiling.
The General Don Felipe Ostrander did not buy Hamley Court, but he and
his wife were always welcome guests there. And Sir James, as became an
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