her? What should she do with his money did she not loathe his memory?
Had not all his debts been paid? These pearls and this money were all
his own.

But to get them. To go now to the white house on the hill; to face that
old life even for an hour, a knocking at the door of a haunted house--he
shrank from the thought. He would have to enter the place like a thief
in the night.

Yet for Rosalie he must take the risk--he must go.




CHAPTER XLIX

THE OPEN GATE

It was a still night, and the moon, delicately bright, gave forth that
radiance which makes spiritual to the eye the coarsest thing. Inside the
white house on the hill all was dark. Sleep had settled on it long
before midnight, for, on the morrow, its master and mistress hoped to
make a journey to the valley of the Chaudiere, where the Passion Play was
being performed by habitants and Indians. The desire to see the play had
become an infatuation in the minds of the two, eager for some interest to
relieve the monotony of a happy life.

But as all slept, a figure in the dress of a habitant moved through the
passages of the house stealthily, yet with an assurance unusual in the
thief or housebreaker. In the darkest passages his step was sure, and