“Oh! everybody is sad, Tardif,” I answered; “there is a great deal of trouble for every one in this world.  You are often very sad indeed.”

“Ah! but I have a cause,” he said.  “Mam’zelle does not know that she is sitting on the grave of my little wife.”

He knelt down beside it as he spoke, and laid his hand gently on the green turf.  I would have risen, but he would not let me.

“No,” he said, “sit still, mam’zelle.  Yes, you would have loved her, poor little soul!  She was an Englishwoman, like you, only not a lady; a pretty little English girl, so little I could carry her like a baby.  None of my people took to her, and she was very lonely, like you again; and she pined and faded away, just quietly, never saying one word against them.  No, no, mam’zelle, I like to see you here.  This is a favorite place with you, and it gives me pleasure.  I ask myself a hundred times a day, ’Is there any thing I can do to make my young lady happy?  Tell me what I can do more than I have done.”

“There is nothing, Tardif,” I answered, “nothing whatever.  If you see me sad sometimes, take no notice of it, for you can do no more for me than you are doing.  As it is, you are almost the only friend, perhaps the only true friend, I have in the world.”

“May God be true to me only as I am true to you!” he said, solemnly, while his dark skin flushed and his eyes kindled.  I looked at him closely.  A more honest face one could never see, and his keen blue eyes met my gaze steadfastly.  Heavy-hearted as I was just then, I could not help but smile, and all his face brightened, as the sea at its dullest brightens suddenly tinder a stray gleam of sunshine.  Without another word we both rose to our feet, and stood side by side for a minute, looking down on the little grave beneath us.  I would have gladly changed places then with the lonely English girl, who had pined away in this remote island.

After that short, silent pause, we went slowly homeward along the quiet, almost solitary lanes.  Twice we met a fisherman, with his creel and nets across his shoulders, who bade us good-night; but no one else crossed our path.

It was a profound monotony, a seclusion I should not have had courage to face wittingly.  But I had been led into it, and I dared not quit it.  How long was it to last?

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.

A false step.

A day came after the winter storms, early, in March, with all the strength and sweetness of spring in it; though there was sharpness enough in the air to make my veins tingle.  The sun was shining with so much heat in it, that I might be out-of-doors all day under the shelter of the rocks, in the warm, southern nooks where the daisies were growing.  The birds sang more blithely than they had ever done before; a lark overhead, flinging down his triumphant notes; a thrush whistling clearly in a hawthorn-bush hanging