Susan thinks Ruddington ought to tell her more about himself, and his conditions of life, both at the Towers and in town. I think she’s right. Now that she’s getting used to her good fortune, her talk has suddenly improved. She’s dropping that raw and childish way of hers, and some of the things she said were quite sensible. If she goes on improving like this, she ought to be tolerably presentable at the month’s end. No doubt it will take years to fill the gaping breaches in her knowledge; and her mind can never, from its very nature, expand enough to make her an all-round companion for such a man as Ruddington seems to be. But I take it that a grain or two of common-sense will be found mixed with his infatuation; and, if so, he will be prepared for a good deal of disenchantment. As for Susan, she’ll always be pretty, and restful, and docile, and sweet: which means that if he is losing some things he is gaining others. Alas, poor Gibson! I’m afraid his dreams are standing a poor chance of coming true. It’s selfish of me not to have sent him a prudent line. I’ll do it to-day. I’ll tell him simply that all’s well with Susan; and perhaps he will guess that all’s up with himself. _Eight o’clock_. I walked alone this afternoon to Bérigny. The hamlet was deserted--or, at least, it looked so. The thatched black-and-white barns stood out sturdily in the bright, strong light, and Bérigny wore all its old prosperous air. But there wasn’t a single body to be seen. I suppose every one was in the fields, or gone to market. The church was open. I sat in it a few minutes: it was so cool and quiet. If I had felt suddenly tempted to steal an image, or to rob the box of Peter’s Pence, there was none to say me nay. The Bérigny churchyard looked sweeter than ever. I like it better than any other I have seen in France, because it is full of natural shrubs and flowers. There are hardly any of those frightful wire crosses and tin immortelles and iron wreaths, as big as cart-wheels, such as you see in dozens everywhere else. And the Bérigny churchyard isn’t _triste_. As you sit on the warm stone platform of the Calvary, you look down over the orchards to the facing uplands--pastures of green velvet, wildly embroidered with, a million yellow flowers. Even the graves are not melancholy. It doesn’t seem any more dreadful that the men and women of Bérigny should be fast asleep, like children in the bosom of their mother earth, than that last year’s beech-leaves and pine-needles should be lying quietly under the ceaseless murmurs of this year’s cool and shady green. Cheerful sounds arise from the valley as you sit and look down. There is blue smoke curling from one or two of the chimneys. Between the surges of light wind you can just hear the voice of the beck as it sings on its way down to Sainte Véronique. No, Bérigny churchyard is not melancholy: for in the midst of death you are in life.