“If I came not alone, I could not come at all,” replied Victorine, sorrowfully.  “My grandfather is too busy, and my aunt likes not to ride except she must, on a market day or to go to church.  No one but thou hast ever walked or ridden with me,” she added in a low voice, sighing; “and now after two days or three thou wilt be gone.”

Willan sighed also, but did not speak.  The words, “I will always ride by thy side, Victorine,” were on his lips, but he felt himself still withheld from speaking them.

The visit at the mill was unsatisfactory.  The elder Gaspard was away, and young Pierre was curt and surly.  The sight of Victorine riding familiarly, and with an evident joyous pride, by the side of one of the richest men in the country, and a young man at that,—­and a young man, moreover, who looked and behaved as if he were in love with his companion,—­how could the poor miller be expected to be cordial and unconstrained with such a sight before his eyes!  Annette also was more overawed even than Victorine had desired she should be by the sight of the handsome stranger,—­so overawed, and withal perhaps a little curious, that she was dumb and awkward; and as for Mere Gaspard, she never under any circumstances had a word to say.  So the visit was very stupid, and everybody felt ill at ease,—­especially Willan, who had lost his temper in the beginning at a speech of Pierre’s to Victorine, which seemed to his jealous sense too familiar.

“I thought thou never wouldst take leave,” he said ill-naturedly to Victorine, as they rode away.

Victorine turned towards him with an admirably counterfeited expression of surprise.  “Oh, sir,” she said, “I did think I ought to wait for thee to take leave.  I was dying with the desire I had to be back in the woods again; and only when I could not bear it any longer, did I bethink me to say that my aunt expected us back to dinner.”

Long they lingered on the river-banks on their way home.  Even the plotting brain of Victorine was not insensible to the charm of the sky, the air, the budding foliage, and the myriads of blossoms.  “Oh, sir,” she said, “I think there never was such a day as this before!”

“I know there never was,” replied Willan, looking at her with an expression which was key to his words.  But the daughter of Jeanne Dubois was not to be wooed by any vague sentimentalisms.  There was one sentence which she was intently waiting to hear Willan Blaycke speak.  Anything short of that Mademoiselle Victorine was too innocent to comprehend.

“Sweet child!” thought Willan to himself, “she doth not know the speech of lovers.  I mistrust that if I wooed her outright, she would be afraid.”

It was long past noon when they reached the Golden Pear.  Dinner had waited till the hungry Victor and Jeanne could wait no longer; but a very pretty and dainty little repast was ready for Willan and Victorine.  As she sat opposite him at the table, so bright and beaming, her whole face full of pleasure, Willan leaned both his arms on the table and looked at her in silence for some minutes.