This collection includes 34 books: The Battle of the Strong, Carnac's Folly, The Judgment House, The March of the White Guard, Michel and Angele, The Money Master, Mrs. Falchion, No Defense, The Pomp of the Lavilettes, The Right of Way, The Seats of the Mighty The Trail of the Sword, The Translation of a Savage, The Trespasser, The Weavers, When Valmond Came to Promise, Wild Youth, The World for Sale, You Never Know Your Luck, Embers, A Lover's Diary, At the Sign of the Eagle, Cumner's Son and Other South Sea Folk, Donovan Pasha and Some People of Egypt, John Enderby, The Land That Had No Turning, The Going of the White Swan, Northern Lights, Parables of a Province, Pierre and His People, A Romany of the Snows, There is Sorrow on the Sea, An Unpardonable Liar, and Old Quebec.
The little hall-way into which Ranulph stepped from the street led through to the kitchen. Guida stood holding back the door for him to enter this real living-room of the house, which opened directly upon the garden behind. It was so cheerful and secluded, looking out from the garden over the wide space beyond to the changeful sea, that since Madame Landresse's death the Sieur de Mauprat had made it reception-room, dining-room, and kitchen all in one. He would willingly have slept there too, but noblesse oblige and the thought of what the Chevalier Orvilliers du Champsavoys de Beaumanoir might think prevented him. Moreover, there was something patriarchal in a kitchen as a reception-room; and both he and the chevalier loved to watch Guida busy with her household duties: at one moment her arms in the dough of the kneading trough; at another picking cherries for a jelly, or casting up her weekly accounts with a little smiling and a little sighing.
If, by chance, it had been proposed by the sieur to adjourn to the small sitting-room which looked out upon the Place du Vier Prison, a gloom would instantly have settled upon them both; though in this little front room there was an ancient arm-chair, over which hung the sword that the Comte Guilbert Mauprat de Chambery had used at Fontenoy against the English.
So it was that this spacious kitchen, with its huge chimney, and paved with square flagstones and sanded, became like one of those ancient corners of camaraderie in some exclusive inn where gentlemen of quality were wont to meet. At the left of the chimney was the great settle, or veille, covered with baize,"flourished" with satinettes, and spread with ferns and rushes, and above it a little shelf of old china worth the ransom of a prince at least. Opposite the doorway were two great armchairs, one for the sieur and the other for the Chevalier, who made his home in the house of one Elie Mattingley, a fisherman by trade and by practice a practical smuggler, with a daughter Carterette whom he loved passing well.
These, with a few constant visitors, formed a coterie: the huge, grizzly- bearded boatman, Jean Touzel, who wore spectacles, befriended smugglers, was approved of all men, and secretly
