grow, through briar and bramble, to end at last in a treacherous morass, whence extrication is generally difficult, sometimes impossible, and always unpleasant. Nevertheless, to get Cerise back from her pension, to find that she had grown into a woman, yet without losing the child’s blue eyes, fond and frank and innocent as ever—to watch her matured intellect, to feel that the plaything was a companion now, though playful and light-hearted still—lastly, to discover that she was a beauty, but a beauty who could never become a rival, because in quite a different style from her mother—all this was very delightful, and the Marquise, seldom low-spirited at any time, had become perfectly sparkling since her daughter came home. So she carolled about the boudoir like a girl, coaxing Pierrot, arranging the flowers, and warning Célandine, between the notes of her foolish love-song, not to let mademoiselle’s chocolate get cold. Mademoiselle, you see, was tired and not yet down; indeed, to tell the truth, not yet up, but pressing a soft flushed cheek against her laced pillow, having just awoke from a dream, in which she was back at the convent in Normandy once more, sauntering down the beech-walk with her director, who somehow, instead of a priest’s habit, wore the uniform of the Grey Musketeers, an irregularity that roused the wrath of the Lady Superior and made her speak out freely; whereat the Musketeer took his pupil’s part, looking down on her with a brave brown face and kind eyes, while he clasped her hand in fond assurance of his aid. Waking thus, she tried hard to get back to sleep, in hopes of dreaming it all over again.