“A quick look from Madame Babette towards Pierre was all that was needed to encourage the boy to follow her.  He went out cautiously.  She was at the end of the street.  She looked up and down, as if waiting for some one.  No one was there.  Back she came, so swiftly that she nearly caught Pierre before he could retreat through the porte-cochere.  There he looked out again.  The neighbourhood was low and wild, and strange; and some one spoke to Virginie,—­nay, laid his hand upon her arm,—­whose dress and aspect (he had emerged out of a side-street) Pierre did not know; but, after a start, and (Pierre could fancy) a little scream, Virginie recognised the stranger, and the two turned up the side street whence the man had come.  Pierre stole swiftly to the corner of this street; no one was there:  they had disappeared up some of the alleys.  Pierre returned home to excite his mother’s infinite surprise.  But they had hardly done talking, when Virginie returned, with a colour and a radiance in her face, which they had never seen there since her father’s death.”

CHAPTER VII.

“I have told you that I heard much of this story from a friend of the Intendant of the De Crequys, whom he met with in London.  Some years afterwards—­the summer before my lord’s death—­I was travelling with him in Devonshire, and we went to see the French prisoners of war on Dartmoor.  We fell into conversation with one of them, whom I found out to be the very Pierre of whom I had heard before, as having been involved in the fatal story of Clement and Virginie, and by him I was told much of their last days, and thus I learnt how to have some sympathy with all those who were concerned in those terrible events; yes, even with the younger Morin himself, on whose behalf Pierre spoke warmly, even after so long a time had elapsed.

“For when the younger Morin called at the porter’s lodge, on the evening of the day when Virginie had gone out for the first time after so many months’ confinement to the conciergerie, he was struck with the improvement in her appearance.  It seems to have hardly been that he thought her beauty greater:  for, in addition to the fact that she was not beautiful, Morin had arrived at that point of being enamoured when it does not signify whether the beloved one is plain or handsome—­she has enchanted one pair of eyes, which henceforward see her through their own medium.  But Morin noticed the faint increase of colour and light in her countenance.  It was as though she had broken through her thick cloud of hopeless sorrow, and was dawning forth into a happier life.  And so, whereas during her grief, he had revered and respected it even to a point of silent sympathy, now that she was gladdened, his heart rose on the wings of strengthened hopes.  Even in the dreary monotony of this existence in his Aunt Babette’s conciergerie, Time had not failed in his work, and now, perhaps, soon he might humbly strive