the sound of his music drifting across the marshes, and after the funeral Sabine had talked of him to Olivia with an enthusiasm curiously foreign to her. Once or twice she had caught a glimpse of him crossing the meadows toward O'Hara's shining chimneys or going down the road that led through the marshes to the sea—a tall, red-haired young man who walked with a slight limp. Sybil, she found, was strangely silent about him, but when she questioned the girl about her plans for the day she found, more often than not, that they had to do with him. When she spoke of him, Sybil had a way of blushing and saying, "He's very nice, Mother. I'll bring him over when you want to see people. . . . I used to know him in Paris."
And Olivia, wisely, did not press her questions. Besides, Sabine had told her almost all there was to know . . . perhaps more than Sybil herself knew.
Sabine said, "He belongs to a rather remarkable family . . . wilful, reckless and full of spirit. His mother is probably the most remarkable of them all. She's a charming woman who has lived luxuriously in Paris most of her life . . . not one of the American colony. She doesn't ape any one and she's incapable of pretense of any sort. She's lived, rather alone, over there on money . . . quite a lot of money . . . which seems to come out of steel-mills in some dirty town of the Middle West. She's one of my great friends . . . a woman of no intellect, but very beautiful and blessed with a devastating charm. She is one of the women who was born for men. . . . She's irresistible to them, and I imagine there have been men in her life always. She was made for men, but her taste is perfect, so her morals don't matter."
The woman . . . indeed all Jean de Cyon's family . . . seemed to fascinate Sabine as she sat having tea with Olivia, for she went on and on, talking far more than usual, de-
