“I hope Madame Farrabesche has not let you want for anything?” said Veronique.

“Oh no! madame, see!” and she pointed to her breakfast.

“This is Monsieur Gerard, of whom I spoke to you,” went on Veronique.  “He is to be my son’s guardian, and after my death you shall live together at the chateau until his majority.”

“Oh! madame, do not talk in that way!”

“My dear child, look at me!” replied Veronique, addressing Denise, in whose eyes the tears rose instantly.  “She has just arrived from New York,” she added, by way of introduction to Gerard.

The engineer put several questions about the new world to the young woman, while Veronique, leaving them alone, went to look at the third and more distant lake of the Gabou.  It was six o’clock as Veronique and Gerard returned in the boat toward the chalet.

“Well?” she said, looking at him.

“You have my promise.”

“Though you are, I know, without prejudices,” she went on, “I must not leave you ignorant of the reason why that poor girl, brought back here by homesickness, left the place originally.”

“A false step?”

“Oh, no!” said Veronique.  “Should I offer her to you if that were so?  She is the sister of a workman who died on the scaffold—­”

“Ah!  Tascheron,” he said, “the murderer of old Pingret.”

“Yes, she is the sister of a murderer,” said Madame Graslin, in a bitter tone; “you are at liberty to take back your promise and—­”

She did not finish, and Gerard was obliged to carry her to the bench before the chalet, where she remained unconscious for some little time.  When she opened her eyes Gerard was on his knees before her and he said instantly:—­

“I will marry Denise.”

Madame Graslin took his head in both hands and kissed him on the forehead; then, seeing his surprise at so much gratitude, she pressed his hand and said: 

“Before long you will know the secret of all this.  Let us go back to the terrace, for it is late; I am very tired, but I must look my last on that dear plain.”

Though the day had been insupportably hot, the storms which during this year devastated parts of Europe and of France but respected the Limousin, had run their course in the basin of the Loire, and the atmosphere was singularly clear.  The sky was so pure that the eye could seize the slightest details on the horizon.  What language can render the delightful concert of busy sounds produced in the village by the return of the workers from the fields?  Such a scene, to be rightly given, needs a great landscape artist and also a great painter of the human face.  Is there not, by the bye, in the lassitude of Nature and that of man a curious affinity which is difficult to grasp?  The depressing heat of a dog-day and the rarification of the air give to the least sound made by human beings all its signification.  The women seated on their doorsteps and waiting for their