fiddle well, I admit but he is so queer and shifty, nosing about, looking
this way and that, never meeting your eyes. It's just as though he were
waiting, biding his time, for--I don't know what."

"Nonsense, Dan; you're not an old woman."

"It may be, Tom, but I feel so anyway. The place hasn't seemed the same
to me since that Frenchman came. I wish he would go away; and apparently
he means to stay on forever."

"I think you would miss him, if he were to go," insisted Pembroke, "for
my part I'm glad he is here. To tell the truth, Dan, he's been the life
of the house."

"He has fascinated you as he has fascinated Mother and Nance," Dan
replied. "But it stands to reason, boy, that he can't be quite all
right. What does he want poking about in a deserted old hole like Deal?"

"What he has said a thousand times; just what he so beautifully
gets--quiet and seclusion."

"Perhaps you are right and I am wrong; but all the same I shall be glad
to see the last of him."

The night was one of bright moonlight at the end of February. The bedroom
windows were open to the cold clear air. Tom was not sleepy, and he lay
for a long time recalling the dreams and emotions that had so stirred him
earlier in the evening, as he had listened to the Marquis's playing. He
kept whistling softly to himself such bars of the music as he could
remember. Dan's chamber faced west, and Tom's bed was so placed that he