Angelot had taken the basket from her hand, and was throwing the chickens their last grain. She stood on the highest step, with a little sigh which might have been of fatigue or of disgust, and her eyes, as she gazed across the valley, were half angry, half melancholy. The sun had gone down behind the opposite hills, and the broad front of the Château de Lancilly, in full view of La Marinière, looked grey and cold against the woods, even in the warm twilight of that rosy evening. "Strange, that it should be inhabited again!" Angelot had emptied the basket, and stood beside his mother; the chickens bustled and scrambled about the foot of the steps. "Yes, and as I hear, by all the perfections," said Madame de la Marinière. "Hervé de Sainfoy is more friendly than ever--and well he may be--his wife is supremely pretty and agreeable, his younger girls are most amiable, and as for Hélène, nothing so enchantingly beautiful has ever set foot in Anjou. Take care, my poor Ange, I beseech you." Angelot laughed. "Then I suppose my father's next duty will be to find a husband for her. I hear she is difficult--or her parents for her, perhaps." "Who told you so?" "Monsieur de Mauves." "What? the Prefect?" "Yes. He sent his respectful compliments to you. I have been spending the day at Les Chouettes with him and the new General. He--oh, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!" Angelot burst into a violent fit of laughing, and leaned, almost helpless, against a pillar of the porch. "Are you mad?" said his mother. "Ah--" he struggled to say--"if only you had seen the cows--our cows--and the General in the air--oh!" A faint smile dawned in the depths of her eyes. "You have certainly lost your senses," she said, and slipped her hand into his arm. "Come down into the garden: I like it in the twilight--and that pile of stones over there will not weigh upon our eyes; the trees hide it. Come, my Ange: tell me all your news, serious and laughable. I am glad you were helping your uncle; but I do not like you to be away all day." "I could not help it, mother," Angelot said. "Yes; I have indeed a great deal to tell you." They strolled down together into the garden, where the vivid after-glow flushed all the flowers with rose. His mother leaned upon his arm, and they paced along by the tall box hedges. The serious part of the story was long, and interested her far more than the General's comic adventure, at which Angelot could only make her smile, though the telling of it sent him off into another fit of laughter. "Poor Monsieur de Mauves, to go about with such a strange animal!" she said. "As for you, my child, you grow more childish every day. When will you be a man? Now be serious, for I hear your father coming." CHAPTER VI HOW LA BELLE HÉLÈNE TOOK AN EVENING WALK