He was out in the grounds with the early morning light. Coffee and sweet French bread were brought out to him, and he was informed of the hours of reunion at the château, whose mistress continued invisible. She might be sleeping. He strolled about, within view of the windows, wondering at her subservience to sleep. Tourdestelle lay in one of those Norman valleys where the river is the mother of rich pasture, and runs hidden between double ranks of sallows, aspens and poplars, that mark its winding line in the arms of trenched meadows. The high land on either side is an unwatered flat up to the horizon, little varied by dusty apple-trees planted in the stubble here and there, and brown mud walls of hamlets; a church-top, a copse, an avenue of dwarf limes leading to the three-parts farm, quarter residence of an enriched peasant striking new roots, or decayed proprietor pinching not to be severed from ancient. Descending on the deep green valley in Summer is like a change of climes. The château stood square at a branch of the river, tossing three light bridges of pretty woodwork to park and garden. Great bouquets of swelling blue and pink hydrangia nestled at his feet on shaven grass. An open window showed a cloth of colour, as in a reminiscence of Italy. Beauchamp heard himself addressed:—“You are looking for my sister-in-law, M. Beauchamp?” The speaker was Madame d’Auffray, to whom he had been introduced overnight—a lady of the aquiline French outline, not ungentle. Renée had spoken affectionately of her, he remembered. There was nothing to make him be on his guard, and he stated that he was looking for Madame de Rouaillout, and did not conceal surprise at the information that she was out on horseback. “She is a tireless person,” Madame d’Auffray remarked. “You will not miss her long. We all meet at twelve, as you know.” “I grudge an hour, for I go to-morrow,” said Beauchamp. The notification of so early a departure, or else his bluntness, astonished her. She fell to praising Renée’s goodness. He kept her to it with lively interrogations, in the manner of a guileless boy urging for eulogies of his dear absent friend. Was it duplicity in him or artlessness? “Has she, do you think, increased in beauty?” Madame d’Auffray inquired: an insidious question, to which he replied: “Once I thought it would be impossible.” Not so bad an answer for an Englishman, in a country where speaking is fencing; the race being little famous for dialectical alertness: but was it artful or simple?