As these thoughts crowded upon poor Pierre he made a violent effort to fling them from him as something intrusive. He would go away, he would resist this entrancing influence. Turning hastily he found himself close to Diane de Monesthrol. She was carrying, easily and lightly, little Léon, the crippled orphan whose parents had both perished at the massacre of Le Chesnaye, and who had himself been grievously maimed by blows from an Indian tomahawk. His spine was injured, and he had but now been suffering from one of those paroxysms of pain which occasionally tortured him. The violence of the attack over, the child, soothed and exhausted, was falling asleep; the heavy blue-veined lids were slowly closing, while the girl bent over him with wistful tenderness. She laid the little one down beneath the shade of a wide-spreading tree, supported by cushions, and then, as she turned, encountered Pierre’s earnest gaze. Le Ber’s eldest son was seized with a sincere conviction that he would be better away from his father’s beautiful ward, yet he stood silent, rooted to the spot. Life just then to Diane was a vague, sweet chaos. Rejoicing in the strength of her ardent youth, it was not easy to accept existence calmly and tranquilly. Every day the sunshine seemed brighter, the sky above her more blue. It was always to her an amusement to tantalize and provoke Pierre, who was curiously sensitive to every girlish taunt. Professing as he did to despise feminine charms, it seemed a frolic to the girl to show him that he was not so invulnerable as he chose to fancy himself. Diane was aware that Anne Barroy was peering anxiously from a side window, and Anne’s sharp, jealous eyes had already detected the weakness which the young man could never have been brought to acknowledge. It was like a child heedlessly playing with fire, for she had formed no conception of what strong human passion might mean. Just to tease Pierre was the impulse of the moment—a thing which she had done a hundred times before and never bestowed a thought upon. Long years afterwards, looking back on her life, it seemed to Diane that on that fragrant summer day, in Le Ber’s sunny garden, she had taken leave forever of her free and careless youth. “It is thus I would always see you, Diane,” Pierre exclaimed eagerly, “engaged in works of charity.” “I take charge of the little Léon simply because Nanon is occupied with Madame la Marquise,” Mademoiselle de Monesthrol explained carelessly. “You spend so much time and thought on those things which are unworthy of you,” the young man could not forbear exhorting her, “lace and low dresses, fontanges and strange trinkets, the immodest curls expressly forbidden by St. Peter and St. Paul, as well as by all the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, the pomp of sin, the favorite devices of Satan. In their wish to please men, women make themselves the instruments and captives of the arch fiend.” Diane flashed a swift, bright, audacious glance at him.