“I do not ask you to come into the house, because I am obliged to go to the sale of the Ronces woods, in order to speak to the men who are cultivating the little lot that we have bought.  I wager, Monsieur de Buxieres, that you are not yet acquainted with our woods?”

“That is true,” he replied, smiling.

“Very well, if you will accompany me, I will show you the canton they are about to develop.  It will not be time lost, for it will be a good thing for the people who are working for you to know that you are interested in their labors.”

Julien replied that he should be happy to be under her guidance.

“In that case,” said Reine, “wait for me here.  I shall be back in a moment.”

She reappeared a few minutes later, wearing a white hood with a cape, and a knitted woolen shawl over her shoulders.

“This way!” said she, showing a path that led across the pasture-lands.

They walked along silently at first.  The sky was clear, the wind had freshened.  Suddenly, as if by enchantment, the fog, which had hung over the forest, became converted into needles of ice.  Each tree was powdered over with frozen snow, and on the hillsides overshadowing the valley the massive tufts of forest were veiled in a bluish-white vapor.

Never had Julien de Buxieres been so long in tete-a-tete with a young woman.  The extreme solitude, the surrounding silence, rendered this dual promenade more intimate and also more embarrassing to a young man who was alarmed at the very thought of a female countenance.  His ecclesiastical education had imbued Julien with very rigorous ideas as to the careful and reserved behavior which should be maintained between the sexes, and his intercourse with the world had been too infrequent for the idea to have been modified in any appreciable degree.  It was natural, therefore, that this walk across the fields in the company of Reine should assume an exaggerated importance in his eyes.  He felt himself troubled and yet happy in the chance afforded him to become more closely acquainted with this young girl, toward whom a secret sympathy drew him more and more.  But he did not know how to begin conversation, and the more he cudgelled his brains to find a way of opening the attack, the more he found himself at sea.  Once more Reine came to his assistance.

“Well, Monsieur de Buxieres,” said she, “do matters go more to your liking now?  You have acted most generously toward Claudet, and he ought to be pleased.”

“Has he spoken to you, then?”

“No; not himself, but good news, like bad, flies fast, and all the villagers are singing your praises.”

“I only did a very simple and just thing,” replied Julien.

“Precisely, but those are the very things that are the hardest to do.  And according as they are done well or ill, so is the person that does them judged by others.”

“You have thought favorably of me then, Mademoiselle Vincart,” he ventured, with a timid smile.