Marie Belloc Lowndes

Studies in love and in terror Marie Belloc Lowndes

CLAIRE DE WISSANT, wife of Jacques de Wissant, Mayor of Falaise, stood in the morningsunlight, graceful with a proud, instinctive grace of poise and gesture, on a wind-blownpath close to the edge of the cliff. At some little distance to her left rose the sloping, mansard roofs of the Pavillon deWissant, the charming country house to which her husband had brought her, a seventeenyear old bride, ten long years ago. She was now gazing eagerly out to sea, shielding her grey, heavy-lidded eyes with herright hand. From her left hand hung a steel chain, to which was attached a small key. A hot haze lay heavily over the great sweep of deep blue waters. It blotted out the lowgrey line on the horizon which, on the majority of each year's days, reminds the citizens ofFalaise how near England is to France. Jacques de Wissant had rejoiced in the entente cordiale, if only because it brought such astream of tourists to the old seaport town of which he was now Mayor. But his beautifulwife thought of the English as gallant foes rather than as friends. Was she not greatgranddaughter to that 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 go on commanding, inthe hour of defeat, to the end?