"No--God be thanked!--of the del' Peyras you have never heard as of the Gros Guillem." "The grapes--the grapes are sour!" scoffed the girl. "I wonder at nothing you have done," said the boy sternly, "since you have told me whence you come. Of the thorn--thorns; of the nettle--stings; of the thistle--thistles--all after their kind. No! God be praised!" The boy took off his cap and looked up. "The Gros Guillem and my father, Ogier del' Peyra, are not to be spoken of in one sentence here, nor will be from the White Throne on the Day of Doom." Looking steadily at the girl seething with anger, with mortified pride, and with desire to exasperate him, he said-- "I should never have thought that you sprang from the Gros Guillem. The likeness must be in the heart, it is not in the face." "Have you seen my father?" asked the girl. "I have never seen him, but I have heard of him." "What have you heard?" "That he is very tall and spider-like in build; they call him 'le gros' in jest, for he is not stout, but very meagre. He has long hands and feet, and a long head with red hair, and pale face with sunspots, and very faint blue eyes, under thick red brows. That is what I am told Le Gros Guillem is like. But you----" "Describe me--go on!" "No!" answered Jean. "There is no need. You see yourself every day in the glass. When there is no glass you look at yourself in the water; when no water, you look at yourself in your nails." "When there is no water, I look at myself in your eyes, and see a little brown creature there--that is me. _Allons!_" She began to laugh. Much of her bad temper had flown; she was a girl of rapidly changing moods. It was true that she was mirrored in Jean del' Peyra's eyes. He was observing her attentively. Never before had he seen so handsome a girl, with olive, transparent skin, through which the flush of colour ran like summer lightning in a summer cloud--such red lips, such rounded cheek and chin; such an easy, graceful figure! The magnificent burnished black hair was loose and flowing over her shoulders; and her eyes!--they had the fire of ten thousand flints lurking in them and flashing out at a word. "How come you here?" asked Jean, in a voice less hard and in a tone less indifferent than before. "This place, La Roque Gageac, is not one for a daughter of Le Gros Guillem. Here we are French. At Domme they are English, and that is the place for your father." "Ah!" said the girl in reply, "among us women French or English are all the same. We are both and we are neither. I suppose you are French?" "Yes, I am French." "And a Bishop's man?" "I live on our own land--Del Peyraland, at Ste. Soure." "And I am with my aunt here. My father considers Domme a little too rough a place for a girl. He has sent me hither. At the gates they did not ask me if I were French or English. They let me through, but not my father's men. They had to ride back to Domme." "He cannot come and see you here?"