Walking as fast as he could out of hearing of the Widow Duval’s tongue, Lomaque took the path by the heap of stones which led out of the high-road, crossed the stream, and arrived at the old water-mill. Close by it stood a cottage--a rough, simple building, with a strip of garden in front. Lomaque’s observant eyes marked the graceful arrangement of the flower-beds, and the delicate whiteness of the curtains that hung behind the badly-glazed narrow windows. “This must be the place,” he said to himself, as he knocked at the door with his stick. “I can see the traces of her hand before I cross the threshold.” The door was opened. “Pray, does the citizen Maurice--” Lomaque began, not seeing clearly, for the first moment, in the dark little passage. Before he could say any more his hand was grasped, his carpet-bag was taken from him, and a well-known voice cried, “Welcome! a thousand thousand times welcome, at last! Citizen Maurice is not at home; but Louis Trudaine takes his place, and is overjoyed to see once more the best and dearest of his friends!” “I hardly know you again. How you are altered for the better!” exclaimed Lomaque, as they entered the parlor of the cottage. “Remember that you see me after a long freedom from anxiety. Since I have lived here, I have gone to rest at night, and have not been afraid of the morning,” replied Trudaine. He went out into the passage while he spoke, and called at the foot of the one flight of stairs which the cottage possessed, “Rose! Rose! come down! The friend whom you most wished to see has arrived at last.” She answered the summons immediately. The frank, friendly warmth of her greeting; her resolute determination, after the first inquiries were over, to help the guest to take off his upper coat with her own hands, so confused and delighted Lomaque, that he hardly knew which way to turn, or what to say. “This is even more trying, in a pleasant way, to a lonely old fellow like me,” he was about to add, “than the unexpected civility of the hot cup of coffee years ago”; but remembering what recollections even that trifling circumstance might recall, he checked himself. “More trying than what?” asked Rose, leading him to a chair.