She came back from early mass, the morning after the dinner party, to find Angelot already gone out with his gun, and her husband just starting for Lancilly. "He is not gone that way, I hope?" she said quickly. "No, no, he is gone across the fields towards Les Chouettes. I told him to bring back some partridge and quail, and a hare or two, if possible. I think he is gone to make his peace with Joseph." "I should like to know the meaning of all that. I must talk to him when he comes in." "My dear Anne, do nothing of the sort. Let the boy alone. If he has a fancy for his cousin, and if Joseph guessed it, which I suspect, it is better for us to ignore it altogether." "I am afraid he has, do you know. I did not think so till last night--but then I saw something. So did Monsieur de Mauves. He said as much. He advised sending Ange into the army--but you will never do that, Urbain!" A gold mist filled the valley, hiding Lancilly, and through it rose the glittering points of the poplars. She walked with him to the garden gate, past the trim box hedges, and then down the lane towards the church. Apple-trees, heavy with red fruit, bent over the way, as safe on that village road as in any fenced orchard. "I do not want to send him into the army," Urbain said, and he looked at her tenderly. He had long doubted whether, to please her, he was not spoiling and wasting the boy's life. He was sometimes angry with himself for his weakness; then again philosophy came to his aid: he laughed and shrugged his shoulders. It had always been so: on one side the bringing up of his son according to his own mind; and on the other, domestic peace. For his little Anne, with all her religion, perhaps because of it, was anything but meek as a wife and mother. It was fortunate for all parties, he now thought, that the present slight anxiety found her and himself on the same side, though for different reasons. "Hélène is an astonishingly pretty girl," he said, "and the sooner she is married the better. Young men will be foolish." "More than pretty--beautiful, I think. A little lifeless--I don't know that I should fall in love with her. Yes--but a good marriage, poor girl. Not to that monster! Adélaïde amazes me." Urbain's ugly face curled up in a rather sardonic smile. He took his wife's hand and kissed it. "My little lady, Adélaïde is to be admired. You are to be adored. Go and say your prayers for us all." He disappeared into the morning mist, which just then moved and swept away under a light wind, opening to view all the opposite slope and the gorgeous, sun-bathed front of Lancilly. "Ah, mon Dieu!" murmured Anne. "To lose both of them to Lancilly--come, it is too much. You shall not have Ange, you horrible old walls--no!"