Victorine advanced, hesitated, advanced again; it was inimitably done.  “The next time, if I know thee better, I might dare,” she whispered, and fled like a deer.

“Where hast thou been?” said Jeanne, angrily.  “The supper dishes are yet all to wash.”

Victorine danced gayly around the kitchen floor.  “Talking with the son of thy husband,” she said.  “He seems to me much cleverer than a magpie.”

Jeanne burst out laughing.  “Thou witch!” she said, secretly well pleased.  “But where didst thou fall upon him?  Thou hast not been in the bar-room?”

“Nay, he fell upon me, the rather,” replied Victorine, artlessly, “as I was resting me at the window of the long storeroom.  He heard me singing, and came there.”

“Did he praise thy voice?” asked Jeanne.  “He is a brave singer himself.”

“Is he?” said Victorine, eagerly.  “He did not tell me that.  He said my voice was like the voice of a wild bird.  And there be birds and birds again, I was minded to tell him, and not all birds make music; but he seemed to me not one to take jests readily.”

“So,” said Jeanne; “that he is not.  Leaves he early in the morning?”

“I think so,” replied Victorine.  “He did not tell me, but I heard the elder man say to Benoit to have the horses ready at earliest light.”

“Thou must serve them again in the morning,” said Jeanne.  “It will be but the once more.”

“Nay,” answered Victorine, “I will not.”

Something in the girl’s tone arrested her aunt’s attention.  “And why?” she said sharply, looking scrutinizingly at her.

Victorine returned the gaze with one as steady.  It was as well, she thought, that there should be an understanding between her aunt and herself soon as late.

“Because he will come again the sooner, Aunt Jeanne, if he sees me no more after to-night.”  And Victorine gave a little mocking nod with her head, turned towards the dresser piled high with dishes, and began to make a great clatter washing them.

Jeanne was silent.  She did not know how to take this.

Victorine glanced up at her mischievously, and laughed aloud.  “Better a grape for me than two figs for thee.  Dost know the old proverb, Aunt Jeanne?  Thou hadst thy figs; I will e’en pluck the grape.”

“Bah, child! thou talkest wildly,” said Jeanne; “I know not what thou ’rt at.”

But she did know very well; only she did not choose to seem to understand.  However, as she thought matters over later in the evening, in the solitude of her own room, one thing was clear to her, and that was that it would probably be safe to trust Mademoiselle Victorine to row her own boat; and Jeanne said as much to her father when he inquired of her how matters had sped.