As if to emphasise the contrast between her and the man who had asked her hand in marriage, Laline herself stopped on the opposite side of the street and began talking and laughing with a group of French children, comprising the little Bertins and others of her neighbours. The little white-headed, brown-faced, toddling things pulled at her hands; evidently they all wished her to go down again to the sands with them, and she was as plainly pleading her household duties as her excuse. "_Voyons donc_, Laline! _Viens avec nous!_" Laline laughed and shook her head. Her small, regular teeth shone white as a child's between her parted red lips. The two Frenchmen beneath the _café_ awning sat up, twirled their moustaches, and wasted many an ogle over the road, tributes to her beauty which Laline was too shortsighted to see, and which, if she had seen them, would have filled her with wonder. The sight of his daughter seemed to trouble Garth's conscience. It was almost as though he heard the voice of her dead mother in his ear, begging him to remember his trust and to guard Laline against such men as the one who sat by his side. "It is nonsense," he muttered, suddenly, "to talk of marrying a child like that! It is not as if she were even precocious--she has scarcely left off playing with her dolls. In a year or two's time it will be quite early enough for her to think of sweethearts. Besides, she wouldn't dream of leaving me and her home for a stranger; and the days of a stern parent coercing his child into a hated marriage are over, if they ever existed." "Will you let me try and persuade her?" suggested Armstrong. "You don't see the best side of me; but then I have an old grudge against you. And I can be very nice when I choose." Before Garth could answer, Armstrong had risen and crossed the sunny street to where the girl stood talking to the laughing children. His long shadow fell across Laline's face as she stooped to kiss the youngest Bertin, and a sudden silence came upon the erstwhile animated group. "I wanted to know, Miss Garth," Wallace began, in a tone of genial kindness, "whether you and your young friends would like some sweets and pastry, because I am going to buy some myself at a certain fascinating shop at the corner of the Rue de la Paix, and, as I am certain to make myself ill if I go in all by myself, I propose that you should all come with me and protect me." The children's shyness vanished at such a proposition; and very soon Captain Garth, from his seat before the _café_, saw a little procession pass down towards the quay; in front, two little Bertin boys and Maggie Royston, aged eleven, from No. 15, Rue Planché, and, a little way behind them, Laline, leading two smaller Bertins by the hand, while a younger Royston trotted contentedly by the side of the big shabbily-dressed young man with the blue eyes and the black moustache, and grasped his fingers confidingly.