Strong in her resolution, Marguerite went about her hundred and one duties during the following week with a quaint little conquering air that made Régis’s eyes follow her amusedly, and a little wistfully, too. Could he ever resign himself to give her up, even partly, even to Basil? He had reflected over the matter in the deeps of his heart, and well did he know that this queer little _Chevalier_ of his would go bravely through life alone, unwed, yearning assuredly for a home and children of her own, but cheerful always, and uncomplaining. So much beauty and love wasted on him, “Antinoüs”--an aging “Antinoüs” in spite of his youthful looks--since this very morning he had found one silver thread among the gold above his temple. What an everlasting and beastly pity that would be! Basil was only a very little his junior; but since she liked him so--and that he never doubted for an instant. Well, parents had to make sacrifices, sometimes much more bitter than this--if it ever came to pass--and Heaven knew it would be bitter enough. Still, he knew that the “Gamin” would always be his, and that she would suffer no permanent separation from him, which was an immense consolation. Thus devised Régis, riding home from a horse-fair in the dim neighborhood--dim in two ways, for in Brittany distances over waste places are great, and, moreover, night was falling rapidly. Indeed, the moon was already shining hazily when he dismounted. Marguerite was, as always, standing on the broad shallow _perron_ waiting for him, and he waved his hand to her with a positively lover-like gesture as he gave his horse to the groom. But whose was the tall, dark silhouette towering behind her? With a view-halloo of astounding fervor Régis sprang up the steps, and in another instant he was pounding Basil most heartily on the back. “Welcome! and welcome! and a thousand welcomes! old fellow!” he cried, beaming with pleasure. “That’s right. When did you come?” “Half an hour ago, and Marguerite has spent every second of it assuring me that I have not aged. What do you think of your daughter’s veracity now?” “The highest possible thinks!” Régis cried, whirling his cousin around. “Let’s look at you here under the luster! Why, you’re more bronzed and more soldierly, that’s all I can discover. A fine figure of a man, as Quentin once said when I showed him the famous statue of Roland I had just brought home from Paris.” They laughed, all three, quite immoderately at this exuberant joke, and walked into the dining-room arm in arm, the “Gamin” in the middle, as befitted her smaller size. The evening that followed was an enchanting one. Where was Basil’s melancholy? The two others had not even leisure to ask themselves that; and as to him, he had so much to tell about his peregrinations half around the globe and back again, so much to listen to as told by them, that in the excitement of recital he forgot his woes for the first time in months and months.