being still at work over the immense harvest-field. Crazy bells
startled them, striking out the hour from behind, over a deserted
churchyard. Still and tenantless also seemed the manor as they
approached, door and window lying open upon the court for the
coolness; or rather it was as if at their approach certain spectral
occupants started back out of the daylight--"Why depart, dear
ghosts?" was what the grandparents would have cried. They had more
in common with that immaterial world than with flesh and blood.
There was room for the existing household, enough and to spare, in
one of the two old houses. That other, the Chateau d'Amour, remained
for Gaston, at first as a delightful, half-known abode of wonders,
though with some childish fear; afterwards, as a delightful nursery
of refined or fantastic sentiment, as he recalled, in this chamber or
that, its old tenants and their doings, from the affectionate
brothers, onwards--above all, how in one room long ago Gabrielle de
Latour had died of joy.

With minds full of their recent business it was difficult to go back
to common occupations; as darkness came on, the impressions of the
day did but return again more vividly and concentrate [13] themselves
upon the inward sense. Observance, loyal concurrence in some high
purpose for him, passive waiting on the hand one might miss in the
darkness, with the gift or gifts therein of which he had the
presentiment, and upon the due acceptance of which the true fortune
of life would turn; these were the hereditary traits alert in Gaston,
as he lay awake in the absolute, moon-lit, stillness, his outward ear
attentive for the wandering footsteps which, through that wide,
lightly-accentuated country, often came and went about the house,
with weird suggestions of a dim passage to and fro, and of an
infinite distance. He would rise, as the footsteps halted perhaps