Day-dreams for ever filled her mind, sharing it with recollections of her happy childhood among the hills. Her soft, near-sighted eyes could never with bare vision perceive the coast of England; but the eldest Bertin boy possessed a telescope, by the aid of which she could distinguish with a bounding heart the white cliffs of her native land. All that she knew of joy and peace, of tender love and gentle sympathy, of refinement and of culture, came from her English experiences; her present life, half drudgery, half solitary wandering, was lonely and hard by comparison. In England she had been the one thought of her mother's mind, the vicar's favourite pupil, the village pet, "little Miss Garth," daughter of a lady known and honoured by all. Here, in the Rue Planché, she was "_la p'tite Gart_," who ran errands, begged for credit from tradespeople, and looked after the _ménage_ with deaf and irascible old Bénoîte. Of her beauty Laline was unconscious; a few artists had sketched her from memory, and she had seen the sketches, and wondered whether her hair really looked like that in the sunshine. But she had read _Ivanhoe_ and other novels by Walter Scott, and her ideal of loveliness was the black-haired type with sloping shoulders, alabaster brow, eyes black as night, and the smallest possible mouth. French romances, except some especially goody-goody stories avowedly intended for the very young, were altogether unknown to her. Captain Garth respected the child-like innocence of his daughter's mind and locked up his amusing paper-covered novels. Of her father's sporting and card-playing associates Laline knew but little. Captain Garth received visitors in his den, which the girl never entered unless her father was the sole occupant of the room. He would have wished to pose before her as a high-minded, hardworking, and honourable gentleman, driven from his country and his equals by the envious spite of a cabal and the undeserved blows of "outrageous fortune;" but when he vapoured to his little girl concerning his high principles and unrecognised genius, Laline said never a word, and contented herself with scanning him with soft eyes which saw outer things but dimly, but which seemed to have the gift at times of divining the hidden spirit beyond.