Retreating from the window a step or two, Victorine said sorrowfully:  “I did not think that thou hadst the face of one who would jest lightly with maidens.”  And she made as if she would go away.

“Pardon, pardon!” cried Willan.  “I am not jesting; I implore thee, think it not.  I did sleep under this tree before supper, and heard such singing!  I had thought it a bird over my head except that the song had words.  I know it was thou.  Be not angry.  Why shouldst thou?  Where didst thou learn those wild songs?”

“From Sister Clarice, in the convent,” answered Victorine.  “It is only last Easter that my grandfather fetched me from the convent to live with him and my aunt Jeanne.”

“Thy aunt Jeanne,” said Willan, slowly.  “Is she thy aunt?”

“Yes,” said Victorine, sadly; “she that was thy father’s wife, whom thou wilt not have in thy house.”

This was a bold stroke on Victorine’s part.  To tell truth, she had had no idea one moment before of saying any such thing; but a sudden emotion of resentment got the better of her, and the words were uttered before she knew it.

Willan was angry.  “All alike,” he thought to himself,—­“a bad lot.  I dare say the woman has set the girl here for nothing else than to try to play on my feelings.”  And it was in a very cold tone that he replied to Victorine,—­

“Thou art not able to judge of such matters at thy age.  Thy aunt is better here than there.  Thou knowest,” he added in a gentler tone, seeing Victorine’s great black eyes swimming in sudden tears, “that she was never as mother to me.  I had never seen her till I returned a man grown.”

Victorine was sobbing now.  “Oh,” she cried, “what ill luck is mine!  I have angered thee; and my aunt did especially charge me that I was to treat thee well.  She doth never speak an ill word of thee, sir, never!  Do not thou charge my hasty words to her.”  And Victorine leaned out of the window, and looked up in Willan Blaycke’s face with a look which she had had good reason to know was well calculated to move a man’s heart.

Willan Blaycke had led a singularly pure life.  He was of a reticent and partly phlegmatic nature; though he looked so like his father, he resembled him little in temperament.  This calmness of nature, added to a deep-seated pride, had stood him in stead of firmly rooted principles of virtue, and had carried him safe through all the temptations of his unprotected and lonely youth.  He had the air and bearing, and had had in most things the experience, of a man of the world; and yet he was as ignorant of the wily ways of a wily woman as if he had never been out of the wilderness.  Victorine’s tears smote on him poignantly.

“Thou poor child!” he said most kindly, “do not weep.  Thou hast done no harm.  I bear no ill will to thine aunt, and never did; and if I had, thou wouldst have disarmed it.  This inn seems to me no place for a young maiden like thee.”