Left alone, I found myself considering the roses on the terrace, and wondering could I take away a slip of one, and keep it alive till I reached home. In the back of my head I knew what was going on up-stairs in the grim lady's room; but I had no mind to lose hold on myself, and presently I went for my fiddle, which was kept in the parlour hard by, and practised scales, a thing I always did when out of Yvon's company, being what he could not abear. To practise scales is a fine thing, Melody, to steady the mind and give it balance; you never knew, my child, why I made you sing your scales so often, that night when your aunt Rejoice was like to die, and all the house in such distress. Your aunt Vesta thought me mad, but I was never in better wits. So I was quiet, when after a long time Yvon came down to me. When I saw that he knew all, I laid my violin away, agitation being bad for the strings,--or so I have always thought. He was in a flame of anger, and fairly stammered in his speech. What had his aunt said to me, he demanded, the night before? How had she treated me, his friend? She was--many things which you know nothing about, Melody, my dear; the very least of them was cat, and serpent, and traitress. But I took a cool tone. "Is it true, Yvon," I asked, "about the gentleman who comes to-morrow? You have already known about it? It is true?" "True!" cried Yvon, his passion breaking out. "Yes, it is true! What, then? Because my sister is to marry, some day,--she is but just out of her pinafores, I tell you,--because some day she is to marry, and the estates are to join, is that a reason that my friend is to be insulted, my pleasure broken up, my summer destroyed? I insist upon knowing what that cat said to you, Jacques!" "She told me what you acknowledge," I said. "That I can be insulted I deny, unless there be ground for what is said. Mme. de Lalange did what she considered to be her duty; and--and I have spent a month of great happiness with you, marquis, and it is a time that will always be the brightest of my life." But at this Yvon flung himself on my neck--it is not a thing practised among men in this country, but in him it seemed nowise strange, my blood being partly like his own--and wept and stormed. He loved me, I am glad to believe, truly; yet after all the most part was to him, that his party of pleasure was spoiled, and his plans broken up. And then I remembered how we had talked together that day in the old grist-mill, and how he had said that when trouble came, we should spread our wings and fly away from it. And Ham's words came back to me, too, till I could almost hear him speak, and see the grave, wise look of him. "Take good stuff, and grind it in the Lord's mill, and you've got the best this world can give." And I found that Ham's philosophy was the one that held.