"I declare, miss," the old man said to me, "I'd sooner set up and watch in the garden myself night after night, than hev that there blessed beast a-destroying of everythink. Certainly, there ain't such a deal jest now; but what it will be when we comes to verbenas and bedding plants saints knows. Ribbon gardening, indeed!--the whole blessed garden's torn to ribbons already. If some one would only poison him!" "If some one would only poison him!" I mentally said, after him. But no one did, and we had to content ourselves with notes. Yes, such notes!--not what they were of old--full of patriotism; but all the same, pressing me to fly with him, to be his, to leave this land of cold and fogs for his own sunny south, where all would be smiles, and beauty, and love, and blue skies, and emerald verdure, and sunshine. Oh, what a future he painted! It was quite enough to destroy one's sleep for the night, for one could do nothing but lie in the wild waking dream of an excited imagination. And then, after such waking hours, there was a violent headache in the morning. What could I do, being so weak, and leaning towards him as I did then? I knew how wicked it was, and how grievous; but then, it all seemed like fate--like something that was to be; and I used to think that all would come right in the end, when mamma and papa would forgive me, and we should all be happy together. "He knows that you will have a nice little sum of money when you come of age," said Clara, spitefully. "That I'm sure he doesn't," I said. "How can you talk such nonsense? Why, he don't know anything about our position at home." "Why, how can you say so?" replied Clara, "when you told him in my hearing, one night down in the conservatory, months ago." And that was right, though I had not recalled it at the time; but it was too bad of Clara to try and make out that Achille was prompted by mercenary motives, when he was the very soul of generosity, and kept himself horribly poor by the amounts he gave away. And, besides, he was too much of a gentleman to care for money, except as regarded the good it would do to his fellow creatures. But there, as it must have been seen all along, Clara always was petty, and spiteful, and full of little remarks of that sort, which she would throw at you, when they would come round, and hard, and prickly, just like one of those nasty, spikey chestnut shucks that will not bear to be handled. So I grew not to mind what she said; and when I told Achille, he used to laugh, and say that she was "une drole de fille," and, like me, he took no further notice of it.