by one simple sentiment, she was far from sure that he was--far from
sure.




CHAPTER VII

The little hall-way into which Ranulph stepped from the street led
through to the kitchen. Guida stood holding back the door for him to
enter this real living-room of the house, which opened directly upon the
garden behind. It was so cheerful and secluded, looking out from the
garden over the wide space beyond to the changeful sea, that since Madame
Landresse's death the Sieur de Mauprat had made it reception-room,
dining-room, and kitchen all in one. He would willingly have slept there
too, but noblesse oblige and the thought of what the Chevalier Orvilliers
du Champsavoys de Beaumanoir might think prevented him. Moreover, there
was something patriarchal in a kitchen as a reception-room; and both he
and the chevalier loved to watch Guida busy with her household duties: at
one moment her arms in the dough of the kneading trough; at another
picking cherries for a jelly, or casting up her weekly accounts with a
little smiling and a little sighing.

If, by chance, it had been proposed by the sieur to adjourn to the small
sitting-room which looked out upon the Place du Vier Prison, a gloom
would instantly have settled upon them both; though in this little front
room there was an ancient arm-chair, over which hung the sword that the
Comte Guilbert Mauprat de Chambery had used at Fontenoy against the
English.