The letter did its errand faithfully.  From the little green, vine-embowered gate of the chateau it found its way to Paris, and arrived that same evening, with its Savigny postmark and impregnated with the odor of the country, at the fifth-floor apartment on the Rue de Braque.

What an event that was!  They read it again and again; and for a whole week, until Sidonie’s departure, it lay on the mantel-shelf beside Madame Chebe’s treasures, the clock under a glass globe and the Empire cups.  To Sidonie it was like a wonderful romance filled with tales of enchantment and promises, which she read without opening it, merely by gazing at the white envelope whereon Claire Fromont’s monogram was engraved in relief.

Little she thought of marriage now.  The important question was, What clothes should she wear at the chateau?  She must give her whole mind to that, to cutting and planning, trying on dresses, devising new ways of arranging her hair.  Poor Frantz!  How heavy his heart was made by these preparations!  That visit to Savigny, which he had tried vainly to oppose, would cause a still further postponement of their wedding, which Sidonie-why, he did not know—­persisted in putting off from day to day.  He could not go to see her; and when she was once there, in the midst of festivities and pleasures, who could say how long she would remain?

The lover in his despair always went to the Delobelles to confide his sorrows, but he never noticed how quickly Desiree rose as soon as he entered, to make room for him by her side at the work-takle, and how she at once sat down again, with cheeks as red as fire and shining eyes.

For some days past they had ceased to work at birds and insects for ornament.  The mother and daughter were hemming pink flounces destined for Sidonie’s frock, and the little cripple never had plied her needle with such good heart.

In truth little Desiree was not Delobelle’s daughter to no purpose.

She inherited her father’s faculty of retaining his illusions, of hoping on to the end and even beyond.

While Frantz was dilating upon his woe, Desire was thinking that, when Sidonie was gone, he would come every day, if it were only to talk about the absent one; that she would have him there by her side, that they would sit up together waiting for “father,” and that, perhaps, some evening, as he sat looking at her, he would discover the difference between the woman who loves you and the one who simply allows herself to be loved.

Thereupon the thought that every stitch taken in the frock tended to hasten the departure which she anticipated with such impatience imparted. extraordinary activity to her needle, and the unhappy lover ruefully watched the flounces and ruffles piling up about her, like little pink, white-capped waves.

When the pink frock was finished, Mademoiselle Chebe started for Savigny.

The chateau of M. Gardinois was built in the valley of the Orge, on the bank of that capriciously lovely stream, with its windmills, its little islands, its dams, and its broad lawns that end at its shores.