Quitting the shrubbery, she went and sat down on an old stone bench in a lonely corner, from which she could keep a watch between the trees on all that was happening in the neighbourhood. She was fond of this nook and in it, before M. Hervart's arrival, she had spent whole mornings dreaming alone. She laughed at the childishness of those dreams now. "It always seemed to me," she thought, "that the branches were just about to open, making way for some beautiful young cavalier.... Without saying a word, he would bring his horse to stop at my side, would lean down, pick me up, lay me across the saddle and off we would go. Then there was to be a mad, furious, endless gallop, and in the end I should go to sleep. And in reality I used to wake up as though from a sleep, even though I hadn't dropped off. Nothing happened but this dumb ride in the blue air, and yet, when I came to myself, I felt tired.... How often I have dreamed this dream! How often have I seen the lilac plumes bending to make way for my lovely young knight and his black horse! The horse was always black. I remember very little of the face of the Perseus who delivered me, for a few hours at least, from the bondage of my boring existence.... A sport? That was indeed a sport! What did he do with his Andromeda, this Perseus of mine? I've never been able to find out. What do Perseuses do with their Andromedas?" To this question Rose's tireless imagination provided, for the hundredth time, a new series of answers. The imagination of a young girl who knows and yet is ignorant of what she desires has an Aretine-like fecundity. Into all these imaginations of hers Rose now introduced the complicity of M. Hervart. Even at the moment when she was on the lookout for Leonor's return, it was really of M. Hervart that she was thinking. Leonor was to be nothing more than a stimulant for her heart and her nerves, a musical accompaniment to something else. The stimulation which the young man's arrival had brought to her went to the profit of M. Hervart. "Xavier," she murmured, "Xavier...." Xavier, meanwhile, was congratulating himself that his paternal intervention had spared Rose's ears the hearing of those over-frank remarks of M. Lanfranc. The architect would of course have toned down his language; but is it good that a young girl should learn the use that wives make of marriage? He said: "M. Lanfranc, keep an eye on your language at table. Don't forget that we have a young girl with us." "Yes," said M. Des Boys "I sent her away from here, but that would hardly be possible during luncheon." "Girls," said Lanfranc, "understand nothing." "They guess," said M. Hervart. M. Des Boys had no opinions on maiden perspicacity, but he desired to conform to custom and allow his daughter to listen only to the choicest conversation. "Well, then," said Lanfranc, "let us profitably employ these moments while we are alone." His lively blue eyes lit up his tanned face.