“Aha!” said the doctor, putting a foot in the stirrup, “a husband for you, perhaps.”

She stood on the spot where they left her, absorbed in watching their progress down the steep path; and when they came past the end of the garden, they saw her already perched on a little heap of stones, so that she might still keep them in view and give them a last nod of farewell.

“There is something very unusual about that girl, sir,” Genestas said to the doctor when they had left the house far behind.

“There is, is there not?” he answered.  “Many a time I have said to myself that she will make a charming wife, but I can only love her as a sister or a daughter, and in no other way; my heart is dead.”

“Has she any relations?” asked Genestas.  “What did her father and mother do?”

“Oh, it is quite a long story,” answered Benassis.  “Neither her father nor mother nor any of her relations are living.  Everything about her down to her name interested me.  La Fosseuse was born here in the town.  Her father, a laborer from Saint Laurent du Pont, was nicknamed Le Fosseur, which is no doubt a contraction of fossoyeur, for the office of sexton had been in his family time out of mind.  All the sad associations of the graveyard hang about the name.  Here as in some other parts of France, there is an old custom, dating from the times of the Latin civilization, in virtue of which a woman takes her husband’s name, with the addition of a feminine termination, and this girl has been called La Fosseuse, after her father.

“The laborer had married the waiting-woman of some countess or other who owns an estate at a distance of a few leagues.  It was a love-match.  Here, as in all country districts, love is a very small element in a marriage.  The peasant, as a rule, wants a wife who will bear him children, a housewife who will make good soup and take it out to him in the fields, who will spin and make his shirts and mend his clothes.  Such a thing had not happened for a long while in a district where a young man not unfrequently leaves his betrothed for another girl who is richer by three or four acres of land.  The fate of Le Fosseur and his wife was scarcely happy enough to induce our Dauphinois to forsake their calculating habits and practical way of regarding things.  La Fosseuse, who was a very pretty woman, died when her daughter was born, and her husband’s grief for his loss was so great that he followed her within the year, leaving nothing in the world to this little one except an existence whose continuance was very doubtful—­a mere feeble flicker of a life.  A charitable neighbor took the care of the baby upon herself, and brought her up till she was nine years old.  Then the burden of supporting La Fosseuse became too heavy for the good woman; so at the time of year when travelers are passing along the roads, she sent her charge to beg for her living upon the highways.