She shook her head dismally, disarranging thereby the spick-and-span neatness of her undulated _bandeaux_ crowned by a bow of creamy lace, and sought her own rooms, resolved to watch minutely the sorry game that--chance somewhat assisting--had just been revealed, and which presented many hitherto undreamed-of but very dangerous possibilities. She who was here to watch over little motherless Marguerite at once began to heap a thousand undeserved reproaches upon herself for what she termed her unpardonable negligence, and felt indeed that in the last half-hour she had become a sadder if a wiser woman. CHAPTER IV Ask; I will not deny, within the strength Courage and Honor may descry in me. Ask of my service to the utmost length And I will give it thee. Marguerite was sitting on the short salt-grass at the top of the _souffleur_ cliff. Beside her was a large reed basket, half filled with _mousserons_--those toothsome little pale-yellow mushrooms that grow in perfect circles all over the table-land--perfect circles, from which, however, one mushroom is always missing, because these erratic cryptogams appear only where the _Farfadets_ (elves) have danced during the night, a member of their company lying on watch at full length upon the ground while they merrily disport themselves in an all but complete _ronde_. The gray-green sward was still dotted with the quaint formation close to Marguerite, but she had stopped harvesting them, and sat idly--a strange thing for her to do--evidently absorbed in the evolutions of the gulls, which kept plunging headlong down to the blue waves, apparently for no other purpose than to fly immediately up again and preen their plumage in the veiled sunlight of the cliff-top. There was an indefinite expression in Marguerite’s attitude which had never been there before: not lassitude, not ennui, but a queer lack of that verve and elasticity hitherto one of her greatest charms. Her delicious face, so like the pastel in the boudoir of the _volière_ suite, was much as usual beneath the brim of her sailor-hat, her slim waist as supple, her shoulders as straight and well drilled as ever, and yet, and yet--? Nobody had noticed any change in her, however, so change assuredly there could not be. A quick step behind her made her turn and see Basil advancing in long strides from the “castle-path”--as the yard-wide track westward along the _falaise_ is distinguished from the one in the opposite direction. “Had a pleasant ride?” she queried, as he came up, instinctively making room for him beside her, as though there had not been mile after mile of room on both interminable stretches to east and to west. “Yes,” he replied, lowering himself to the grass at her side and pushing back his cap to let the strong sea-breeze cool his forehead. “A very nice ride. But why didn’t you come with us, my dear little ‘Gamin’?”