“In your heart, monsieur?” “In my paint-box, mademoiselle.” “Well,” she said, “they may remain there, for me. I shall never come to claim them.” “You had best not,” he said. “It is full of ghosts that might frighten or repel you.” She was moving away, when she stopped suddenly. “Look who comes!” she cried low. “There is the pretty subject for your pencil!” The fountain stood at the village head, on ground somewhat raised above the wide street, or _Place_, round which the hamlet was gathered. Not a soul seemed to be abroad in the hot sleepy morning. The jalousies of twenty small houses were closed; the ground-haze boiled up a fair man’s height as seen against any dark background; the tower of the little white church looked as if its very peaked cap of lead were melting and sinking over its eyes--an illusion grotesquely accented by the exclamatory expression of the arrow-slit of a window underneath. There was scarce a sound, even, to emphasise the stillness--the tinkle of a running gutter, the drowsy weak ring of iron on a distant anvil--these were all. Méricourt lay sunk in panting slumber in the lap of its woods, its chimney-pots gasping at an inexorable sky. But now there came towards and past the fountain, from a hidden meadow path, a second girl, who bore upon her head, gracefully poising it, a fragrant bundle of clover, young forest shoots and tufted grasses, under the shadow of which her face was blurred as soft and luminous as a face in tender crayons. “It is a picture,” said Ned. “It is half a saint,” said the girl. Then she cried, in her flexible rich voice-- “_Holà_, Nicette! I shiver here in a colder shadow than thine.” “Nicette!” muttered Ned, and he scrutinised the passing figure more closely. “How, Théroigne?” answered back the other, without slackening her pace or turning her head. “There runs a new spring in Méricourt!” cried the girl, with an impudent glance at the young man. “But a new spring! and how dost thou know?” “My little finger told me. It has veins of ice, Nicette. Thou needst not scruple to bathe in it, for all thy modesty.” The clover-bearer passed on, with a little ambiguous laugh. “And she is a saint?” said Ned. “Half a saint, by monsieur’s permission--a sweet _bon-chrétien_ with one cheek to the sun and one to the convent wall.” “And presently to fall of her own sweetness, no doubt.” To his surprise the girl drew herself up haughtily at his words. “You exceed the bounds of insolence, monsieur,” she said frigidly. “It is like blasphemy so to speak of Nicette Legrand. And what authority has monsieur for his statement?” “How can I have any, Théroigne, but your own show of levity towards me?” She seemed about to retort angrily, changed her mind, shouldered the pitcher, and turned to go. “At least,” said Ned, “have the goodness to first direct me to the Château Méricourt.” She twisted about sharply. “The chateau! What do you seek there?” “Only my friend, M. de St Denys.” “Your friend!”