"Oh no," said Victorine, demurely. "It was not permitted to converse with the priests except in the chapel." And choking back an amused little laugh she bounded to the ladder-like stairway and climbed up into her own room. "Saints! what an ankle the girl has, to be sure!" thought Jeanne, as she watched Victorine's shapely legs slowly vanishing up the stair. "What has filled her head so full of that upstart Willan, I wonder!" A thought struck Jeanne; the only wonder was it had never struck her before. In her sudden excitement she sprung from her chair, and began to walk rapidly up and down the floor. She pressed her hand to her forehead; she tore open the handkerchief which was crossed on her bosom; her eyes flashed; her cheeks grew red; she breathed quicker. "The girl's handsome enough to turn any man's head, and twice as clever as I ever was," she thought. She sat down in her chair again. The idea which had occurred to her was over-whelming. She spoke aloud and was unconscious of it. "Ah, but that would be a triumph!" she said. "Who knows? who knows?" "Victorine!" she called; "Victorine!" "Yes, aunt," replied Victorine. "There's plenty of honey left in the flowers to keep pears sweet after the bees are dead," said Jeanne, mischievously, and went downstairs chuckling over her new secret thought. "I'll never let the child know I've thought of such a thing," she mused, as she took her accustomed seat in the bar. "I'll bide my time. Strange things have happened, and may happen again." "What a queer speech of Aunt Jeanne's!" thought Victorine at her casement window. "What a fool I was to have said anything about Father Anselmo! Poor fellow! I wonder why he doesn't run away from the monastery!" II. The south wind's secret, when it blows, Oh, what man knows? How did it turn the rose's bud Into a rose? What went before, no garden shows; Only the rose! What hour the bitter north wind blows, The south wind knows. Why did it turn the rose's bud Into a rose? Alas, to-day the garden shows A dying rose! Jeanne had not to wait long. It was only a few days after this conversation with Victorine,--the big pear-tree was still snowy-white with bloom, and the tireless bees still buzzed thick among its boughs,--when Jeanne, standing in the doorway at sunset, saw two riders approaching the inn. At her first glance she recognized Willan Blaycke. Jeanne's mind moved quickly. In the twinkling of an eye she had sprung back into the bar-room, and said to her father,-- "Father, father, be quick! Here comes Willan Blaycke riding; and another, an old man, with him. Thou must tend the bar; for hand so much as a glass of gin to that man will I never. I shut myself up till he is gone." "Nay, nay, Jeanne," replied Victor; "I'll turn him from my door. He's to get no lodging under this roof, he nor his,--I promise you that." And Victor was bustling angrily to the door.