"A thousand pardons, _ma tante_! please call my words unsaid. And you, _mon cousin_, I entreat take no heed of the sighings of a young captive chafing against her fetters. Indeed, I am a very happy slave and only resent my chain on rare occasions, when it is pulled more tightly than suits my fancy. Otherwise my gaolers are passing lenient, and I am given plenty of liberty, so long as I indulge in it alone; and when in the early morning I take my favourite walks in the woods, I am even allowed to wander as far as the silent pool and listen to the pigeons of St. Front, unattended by a chaperone." Fernande, while she spoke, appeared deeply engrossed in disentangling a knot in her embroidery silk; this, no doubt, accounted for the fact that her words came somewhat jerkily, and with what seemed like deliberate slowness and emphasis. Laurent, lost in the whirl of his own jealousy, watched her less keenly than he was wont to do. Certainly he did not notice the glance which accompanied those words--a glance which de Maurel, on the other hand, did not fail to catch. It was directed at him, and was accompanied by an enigmatical little smile which he was not slow to interpret--so much guile had a pair of blue eyes already poured into the soul of this unsophisticated barbarian! Twenty-four hours ago he would have been intolerant of a young woman's diatribe on the subject of conventions, with which he had neither sympathy nor patience; to-day he heard in it certain tones which for him were full of meaning and of a vague promise. The feeling, too, that this exquisite creature took him, as it were, into her confidence, that she implied--by that one glance of her blue eyes--that a secret understanding existed between her and him, was one that filled him with an extraordinary sense of happiness--of detachment from everything else around him--of walking on air, and of seeing the blue ether above him, open to show him a vision of intoxicating bliss. V