Piotr to her as a little messenger from afar, a playfellow, or a toy, according to choice. He is very advanced for his age (all paternal pride laid aside), even too much so--which is one of the reasons why I think that a thorough change will be good for him--very advanced indeed, and sometimes preternaturally solemn, as his eminently Slav nature inclines him to be, not to mention some decidedly British and splenetic strain, inherited, doubtless, from some maternal ancestor or other. I am waiting your reply very anxiously, and remain, my dear Régis, Your devoted friend and cousin, Basil. Marguerite, curled up on an uncompromisingly bamboo lounge in the flower-gallery of the Hôtel de Plenhöel--where five years before she had bidden Basil farewell--was reading for the tenth time at least Basil’s letter, received some days before. Her father had answered it by return post--of course in the affirmative--and ever since then Marguerite had been preparing to receive her youthful guest. At twenty-one the “Gamin” was still the “Gamin” of yore. To the eye she had not changed at all, yet she was more than ever the “Moonglade” of her cousin’s fancy, by right of some quality as apparent as the path of its transmission to the observer was obscure. She was the picture of ethereal health--if one may thus express oneself--so delicately tinted was her little person, so gravely sweet her eyes. The rose hue of her skin was the exact color of those tiny waxen blossoms the Bretons call _fleurs-de-Jesus_, that have but the very faintest hint of a blush beneath their white surface. Her hair was the same pale-golden nimbus as when she left her convent, but she wore it differently now--more smoothly coiled around her small head. In one word, there was about her a sort of crystalline aureole that set her apart from other beings. “Antinoüs,” if questioned, would have asserted--and with truth--that she was the “jolliest little chap” in creation, though a finer observer might have maintained that her laughter was often from the lips only and not from the eyes--those eyes that at this moment, while she was alone with Basil’s letter, were not entirely dry. Once or twice she breathed quickly, impatiently, as she thought of all that had happened. Indeed, the past years had sometimes been hard to get through with. She knew without the possibility of a doubt that Basil was not happy. She had never been told so, but, nevertheless, she knew! Had it been otherwise the “Gamin,” the gay and brave according to Jean de Salvières, would have felt differently, and accepted life and its burdens easily enough. Unfortunately, it cost her, in the light of this intuitive knowledge, a good deal of energy to do so, and her oft-repeated silent vows to think no more about it were writ in water.