The other woman, finding that the ideas were getting scarce, began to write the address carefully: 

“TO MONSIEUR MOAN, SYLVESTRE, ABOARD THE MARIE, co CAPTAIN GUERMEUR, IN THE SEA OF ICELAND, NEAR RYKAWYK.”

Here she lifted her head to ask:  “Is that all, Granny Moan?”

The querist was young, adorably young, a girl of twenty in fact; very fair—­a rare complexion in this corner of Brittany, where the race runs swarthy—­very fair, we say, with great grey eyes between almost black lashes; her brows, as fair as the hair, seemed as if they had a darker streak in their midst, which gave a wonderful expression of strength and will to the beautiful face.  The rather short profile was very dignified, the nose continuing the line of the brow with absolute rectitude, as in a Greek statue.  A deep dimple under the lower lip foiled it up delightfully; and from time to time, when she was absorbed by a particular idea, she bit this lower lip with her white upper teeth, making the blood run in tiny red veins under the delicate skin.  In her supple form there was no little pride, with gravity also, which she inherited from the bold Icelandic sailors, her ancestors.  The expression of her eyes was both steady and gentle.

Her cap was in the shape of a cockle-shell, worn low on the brow, and drawn back on either side, showing thick tresses of hair about the ears, a head-dress that has remained from remote times and gives quite an olden look to the women of Paimpol.

One felt instinctively that she had been reared differently than the poor old woman to whom she gave the name of grandmother, but who is reality was but a distant great-aunt.

She was the daughter of M. Mevel, a former Icelander, a bit of a freebooter, who had made a fortune by bold undertakings out at sea.

The fine room where the letter had been just written was hers; a new bed, such as townspeople have, with muslin lace-edged curtains, and on the stone walls a light-coloured paper, toning down the irregularities of the granite; overhead a coating of whitewash covered the great beams that revealed the antiquity of the abode; it was the home of well-to-do folk, and the windows looked out upon the old gray market-place of Paimpol, where the pardons are held.

“Is it done, Granny Yvonne?  Have you nothing else to tell him?”

“No, my lass, only I would like you to add a word of greeting to young Gaos.”

“Young Gaos” was otherwise called Yann.  The proud beautiful girl had blushed very red when she wrote those words.  And as soon as they were added at the bottom of the page, in a running hand, she rose and turned her head aside as if to look at some very interesting object out on the market-place.

Standing, she was rather tall; her waist was modelled in a clinging bodice, as perfectly fitting as that of a fashionable dame.  In spite of her cap, she looked like a real lady.  Even her hands, without being conventionally small, were white and delicate, never having touched rough work.