The owner of the log-built restaurant, a thick-set, grizzled veteran of the Franco-Prussian war, the breast of his rusty velveteen jacket proudly bearing a row of medals, stood talking to Mrs. Frayling, hat in hand.  His right foot had suffered amputation some inches above the ankle, and he walked with the ungainly support of a crutch-topped peg-leg strapped to the flexed knee.

As Damaris approached the carriage, he swept back the fur rug in gallantly respectful invitation; and, so soon as she ensconced herself on the seat beside Henrietta, bending down he firmly and comfortably tucked it round her.  He declared, further, as she thanked him, it an honour in any capacity to serve her, since had not Madame, but this moment, so gracefully informed him of the commanding military career of the Mademoiselle’s father, possessor of that unique distinction the Victoria Cross—­a person animated, moreover, as Madame reported, by sincere sympathy for the tragic sorrows of well-beloved and so now cruelly dismembered France.

Damaris heard, in this singing of her father’s praises, a grateful reconciling strain.  She found it profitable, just now, to recall the heroic deeds, the notable achievements which marked his record.  Her coffee tasted the more fragrant for it, the butter the fresher, the honey the sweeter wherewith she spread the clean coarse home-baked bread.  She ate, indeed, with a capital appetite, the long drive and stimulating air, making her hungry.  Possibly even her recent emotion contributed to that result; for in youth heartache by no means connotes a disposition towards fasting, rather does diet, generous in quantity, materially assist to soothe its anguish.

This meal, in fact, partaken of in the open, alone with Henrietta, object of her childhood’s idolatry—­the first they had shared since those remote and guileless years—­assumed to Damaris a sacramental character, though of the earthly and mundane rather than transcendental kind.  Its communion was one of good fellowship, of agreement in cultivation of the lighter social side; which, upon our maiden’s part, implied tacit consent to conform to easier standards than those until now regulating her thought and action, implied tacit acceptance of Henrietta as example and as guide.

Whether the latter would have found cause for self-congratulation, could she have fathomed the precise cause of this apparently speedy conquest and speedy surrender, is doubtful; since it, in fact, took its rise less in the fascination of devotion given, than in that of devotion denied.  She happened to be here on the spot at a critical juncture, and thus to catch the young girl’s heart on the rebound.  That was all—­that, joined with Damaris’ instinctive necessity to play fair and pay in honest coin for every benefit received.