The Light That Lures by Percy James Brebner
page 38 of 343 (11%)
page 38 of 343 (11%)
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will see through a mist of regret, through tears perchance. No beauty
can do away with the fact that it is only a land of exile, to be endured and made the best of for a while, never to be really loved. There is coming an hour in which he may return home, and he is forever looking forward, counting the days. The present must be lived, but reality lies in the future. The Marquise de Rovère, brilliant, witty, proud as any woman in France, daughter of ancestors famous during the time of the fourteenth and fifteenth Louis, had in the long past a forbear who was lord of this château of Beauvais. Since then there had been other lords with whom she had nothing to do, but her grandfather having grown rich, unscrupulously, it was said, bought Beauvais, restored it, added to it and tried to forget that it had ever passed out of the hands of his ancestors. In due time his granddaughter inherited it, and after that terrible day at Versailles when the mob had stormed the palace, when many of the nobility foresaw disaster and made haste to flee from it into voluntary exile, what better place could the Marquise choose than this château of Beauvais? Hither she had come with her niece Jeanne St. Clair, and others had followed. In Paris the Marquise had been the center of a brilliant coterie, she would still be a center in Beauvais and the château should be open to every emigré of distinction. So it came to pass that sleepy Beauvais had suddenly stretched itself and aroused from slumber. The Marquise was rich, her niece a wealthy heiress, much of both their fortunes not dependent upon French finance, and a golden harvest fell upon the simple mountaineers and cattle tenders. Every available room was at the disposal of master or lackey, and the sleepy square was alive with men and women who had intrigued and danced at Versailles, who had played pastoral games with Marie |
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