having gone to Auvergne. She is really our friend and understands
us."

In obedience to this request--though perhaps inwardly regretting
that it should have been made--Durham that afternoon presented
himself at the proud old house beyond the Seine. More than ever, in
the semi-abandonment of the _morte saison_, with reduced service,
and shutters closed to the silence of the high-walled court, did it
strike the American as the incorruptible custodian of old prejudices
and strange social survivals. The thought of what he must represent
to the almost human consciousness which such old houses seem to
possess, made him feel like a barbarian desecrating the silence of a
temple of the earlier faith. Not that there was anything venerable
in the attestations of the Hotel de Malrive, except in so far as, to
a sensitive imagination, every concrete embodiment of a past order
of things testifies to real convictions once suffered for. Durham,
at any rate, always alive in practical issues to the view of the
other side, had enough sympathy left over to spend it sometimes,
whimsically, on such perceptions of difference. Today, especially,
the assurance of success--the sense of entering like a victorious
beleaguerer receiving the keys of the stronghold--disposed him to a
sentimental perception of what the other side might have to say for
itself, in the language of old portraits, old relics, old usages
dumbly outraged by his mere presence.

On the appearance of Madame de Treymes, however, such considerations
gave way to the immediate act of wondering how she meant to carry
off her share of the adventure. Durham had not forgotten the note on
which their last conversation had closed: the lapse of time serving
only to give more precision and perspective to the impression he had