Gaston whistled softly, then:

"So would he, I fancy, before he died. But I shall not go, so you will
not need to risk a finger for me. I am going to stay, Hovey. Good-
night. Look after Brillon, please."

He held out his hand. Her fingers twitched in his, then grasped them
nervously.

"Yes, sir. Good-night, Sir. It's--it's like him comin' back, sir."

Then she suddenly turned and hurried from the room, a blunt figure to
whom emotion was not graceful. "H'm!" said Gaston, as he shut the door.
"Parlourmaid then, eh? History at every turn! 'Voici le sabre de mon
pere!'"




CHAPTER III

HE TELLS THE STORY OF HIS LIFE

Gaston Belward was not sentimental: that belongs to the middle-class
Englishman's ideal of civilisation. But he had a civilisation akin to
the highest; incongruous, therefore, to the general as the sympathy
between the United States and Russia. The highest civilisation can be
independent. The English aristocrat is at home in the lodge of a Sioux
chief or the bamboo-hut of a Fijian, and makes brothers of "savages,"