CHAPTER XXVIII.
The Links "La plus grande preuve d'abnegation que donne l'amitie, c'est de vivre a cote de l'amour." Earlier in this record mention has been made--and, indeed, the reader's attention called thereto--of certain events which, in the light of subsequent knowledge, pieced themselves together like links of a chain into one complete whole.
During the quiet months that closed the year of the Commune I dwelt at Hopton, Isabella being away, and Little Corton in the care of a housekeeper.

Leisure was thus afforded me for the task of piecing together these links of the past.
It was hard at first to realise that those few moments passed on the pierhead at Genoa did not form part of my illness and the dreamy memories of that time.

But having always been of a matter of fact mind I allowed myself no illusions in this respect, and this strange detail of an incomprehensible life forced itself upon my understanding at length when the inexplicable became dimly legible.
In my native air I soon picked up strength, forgetting, in truth, my wounds and illness before the shooting season.

Nevertheless, I throw a gun up to my shoulder less nimbly than I did before Miste's bullet found its billet among the muscles of my arm.
Madame de Clericy and Lucille had returned to Paris, but, the former wrote me, were anxious to get away from the capital, which no longer offered a pleasant home to avowed Legitimists.

Madame still entrusted me with the management of her affairs, which I administered _tant bien que mal_ by correspondence, and the harvest promised to be such a good one as to set our minds at rest respecting the immediate future.
Alphonse Giraud passed a few days, from time to time, with the ladies, but he being a poor correspondent, and I no better, we had but little knowledge of each other at this time.
Madame, I observed, made but brief reference to Lucille now.