seen under the warm radiance of the sun, which brought out the lizards and intensified into sharpness the rich shadow of each bit of carving, and every golden patch of lichen on the mellow stone, or clothed with a more restful and sympathetic charm under the soft cloudy half-lights of a grey day. Behind the château rose a low wooded hill, in front ran a long terrace, which separated it from the flower-beds and a broad stretch of turf. The kitchen-garden and the pond, where frogs kept up a turbulent croaking, were on one side.

But the decay which may add a charm to architecture becomes dreary and unlovely in a garden. Six years ago the turf was uncared for, the flowers grew untrimmed; it was evident that the fortunes of the family were at a low ebb. So with the interior. The greater number of rooms were closed, and only two or three servants remained of the many who had been there during the lifetime of the Baron Bernard. The Baron Bernard had been a man of sense and integrity, highly respected in the neighbourhood—unfortunately, he was drowned in the river at a comparatively early age, leaving a widow; one son, Léon; two daughters, Félicie and Claire; and a well-ordered estate.

For a few years this continued, but with Léon grown up came change. He was a young man with the easiest of tempers, a genuine charm of face and manner, and the most extravagant tastes. His mother and sisters adored, and did their best to spoil him. They succeeded admirably. He began to spend money at the earliest possible age at which a man masters that easiest of accomplishments, and he denied himself nothing. There had been savings daring his boyhood; he fancied the sum inexhaustible, and looked upon it as loose cash intended to be flung away. It was not, it need hardly he remarked, at Poissy that the money was spent; Paris—Paris became the one place in the world where he cared to pass his days, with an occasional flying visit to Poissy, where his intendant was installed with the impossible task before him of meeting increased expenditure upon diminishing receipts. M. Georges seldom saw his employer, and then was put off by good-humoured banter. If he carried his tale to Mme. de Beaudrillart, she invariably treated him as the one to blame, and would only repeat that it was natural for a young man to enjoy himself during the early years of his life. Money must be raised somehow.

“In that case, madame,” said little M. Georges, as firmly as he could, “portions of the property will have to be sold. Monsieur le baron will consent?”

She paused, struck with dismay.

“You mean that it is absolutely necessary?”

“I mean that no other course whatever remains—except to borrow.”

“Oh, no borrowing!” returned Mme. de Beaudrillart, hastily, and M. Georges smiled covertly, aware of M. Léon’s debts in Paris. She walked to the window, and came back. “If it must be,” she said, reluctantly, “you had better dispose of some of the outlying property. But permit me to remark, Monsieur Georges, that it appears to me that perhaps greater experience might have prevented such a sacrifice.”

Experience had, at any rate, taught poor M. Georges the undesirability of entering upon an argument with Mme. de Beaudrillart. He bowed low, and retired to write to M. Léon, who sent him an airy letter to the effect that in years to come it would be easy enough to buy back whatever their misfortunes required them to part with at the present moment. Mme. de Beaudrillart, whenever she encountered M. Georges, looked at him with displeasure; the only person from whom he received any sympathy was Mlle. Claire, and hers scarcely reached the point of blaming Léon.

The first piece of property sold soon carried another with it. Rich vineyards and mills found immediate purchasers, and changed hands easily. The worst of it was that Poissy was left with land which was not so profitable, and that the rentals became quickly reduced, while M. Léon’s expend it are did not diminish in the same proportion, for if by fits and starts he practised a little economy, it was followed by a reaction, as if he imagined that what he had saved gave him something more to spend. Debts and mortgages, like venomous spiders, crept over poor Poissy, and, once having got it in their clutches, held it tight. They reached this point at last, that nothing remained with which to satisfy his creditors except the château itself; and when the fact forced itself upon his mind, the shock was sufficiently great to stun even M. Léon.

He hurried back, and sent for M. Georges. In the crash of disaster he felt as if he had been purposely kept in ignorance, forgetting the letters which had seemed to him only the tiresome forebodings of a timid man. His mother, who refused to blame her son, offered up the intendant as a scapegoat. If he were not in fault, how could matters have arrived at their present disastrous condition? For what was he placed there, if not to preserve the estates! M. Léon winced.

“What I complain of is that the state of affairs should not have been forced upon me,” he said, running his hands through his hair. “Good heavens! if I had once understood, should I have been such a fool?”

Mlle. Claire, who was very pale, looked up.

“Did not Monsieur Georges entreat you to return, or to appoint to see him in Paris!”

“Entreat! He should have insisted,” cried Mme. de Beaudrillart. “If Léon had but understood the gravity of the case, or if I had but known! But Monsieur Georges is a man who lays infinite stress on minute points, and fails altogether to impress you with what is important.”

M. Georges was dismissed; and this was perhaps the only deliberate harshness Léon ever committed in his life. Then the young baron set himself to look into his debts, and get together the total sum; it amounted to more than two hundred thousand francs.

“There is but one thing,” said Mme. de Beaudrillart; “you must marry.”

But to this Léon, who had not shown himself very scrupulous, objected. He had no inclination, he said, to marry, and he disliked the idea of being indebted for Poissy itself to a wife. He would go to Paris, where it would be hard if he could not, among quick-witted advisers, find some means of redeeming his fortunes. He went, and, for the first time in his life, really worked, and with feverish energy. He ran here and there among his old companions, who were prodigal of sympathy, but offered little more substantial. It seemed impossible that he should be unable to raise money when, throughout his prosperous days, it had been pressed upon him. But his eyes were sufficiently opened to perceive that the only terms by which he could free himself from present disaster were ruinous, and would merely serve to postpone the evil day. As the value of his securities decreased, a more extortionate rate of interest was demanded. He cursed his own folly, but could see no way out of the quagmire into which it had plunged him. His friends reiterated Mme. de Beaudrillart’s advice. For the sake of rank, many a girl with a large fortune would be ready to raise his fallen fortunes; one or two were even pointed out to him, and their dowries dangled before his eyes. But he remained obstinate.

When he came to Paris there had been an idea of his seeking some appointment, by means of which, and the strictest economy at Poissy, the interest on his debts might be scraped together. Unfortunately, Léon’s ideas of money were large—so large that a little seemed to him as useless as none. If by one great coup he might gain a considerable sum—good! But to add franc to franc, and painfully lessen his obligations by scarcely perceptible payments, was