STUDIES IN LOVE
AND IN TERROR
BY
(Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes)
Short Story Index Reprint Series
 | BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS FREEPORT, NEW YORK |
First Published 1913
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
| PAGE | |
|---|---|
| Price of Admiralty | 1 |
| The Child | 99 |
| St. Catherine's Eve | 131 |
| The Woman from Purgatory | 187 |
| Why They Married | 227 |
[3]PRICE OF ADMIRALTY
Ce pays nous ennuie, O mort! Appareillons!"
I
CLAIRE DE WISSANT, wife of Jacques de Wissant, Mayor of Falaise, stoodin the morning sunlight, graceful with a proud, instinctive grace ofpoise and gesture, on a wind-blown path close to the edge of the cliff.
At some little distance to her left rose the sloping, mansard roofs ofthe Pavillon de Wissant, the charming country house to which her husbandhad brought her, a seventeen year old bride, ten long years ago.
She was now gazing eagerly out to sea, shielding her grey, heavy-liddedeyes with her right hand. From her left hand hung a steel chain, towhich was attached a small key.
A hot haze lay heavily over the great sweep of deep blue waters. Itblotted out the low grey line on the horizon which, on the majority ofeach year's days, reminds the citizens of Falaise how near England is toFrance.
[4]Jacques de Wissant had rejoiced in the entente cordiale, if onlybecause it brought such a stream of tourists to the old seaport town ofwhich he was now Mayor. But his beautiful wife thought of the English asgallant foes rather than as friends. Was she not great-granddaughter tothat admiral who at Trafalgar, when both his legs were shattered bychain-shot, bade his men place him in a barrel of bran that he might goon commanding, in the hour of defeat, to the end?
And yet as Claire stood there, her eyes sweeping the sea for an as yetinvisible craft, her heart seemed to beat rhythmically to the last verseof a noble English poem which the governess of her twin daughters hadmade them recite to her that very morning. How did it run? Aloud shemurmured:
As you too shall adore—"
and then she stopped, her quivering lips refusing to form the twoconcluding lines.
To Claire de Wissant, that moving cry from a man