"Ah!--Lemois--the top of the morning to you and yours!" Louis' stentorian voice rings out. "Never saw a better one come out of the skies. Out with you, Herbert. Are we the first to arrive? Here, give me that basket of grapes and box of bonbons. A magnificent run, Lemois. Left Paris at five o'clock, while the milk was going its rounds; spun through Lisieux before they were wide awake; struck the coast, and since then nothing but apple-bloom--one great pink-and-white bedquilt up hill and down dale. Glorious! I want a whole tree, full of blossoms, remember--just as I wrote you--none of your mean little chopped-off twigs, but a cart-load of branches. Let me have that old apple-tree out in the lot in front--the apples were never any good, and Mignon may as well have the blossoms as those thieving boys. Did you send word to the school children? Yes, of course you did. Oh, I tell you, Herbert, we are going to have a bully time--Paul and Virginia are not in it. Hello! Leà, you up there, you blessed old carved root of a virgin!--where's the adorable Mignon?" "Good-morning, Monsieur Louis--and you too, Monsieur Herbert," came her voice in reply from the rail of the gallery above our heads. "Mignon is inside," and she pointed to the closed door behind her. "Gaston's mother is helping her. Madame la marquise will be here any minute, and so will Monsieur Le Blanc and everybody from Buezval. Oh!--you should see my child! You wouldn't know her in the pretty clothes madame has sent." And now while Herbert is digging out from under the motor seats various packages tied with white ribbons, including the drawing he made of Leà, now richly framed, and which with the aid of the old woman he carried up the crooked stairway and deposited at a certain door, I will tell you what all this excitement is about. Madame la marquise has had her way. Not an instantaneous and complete victory. There had been parleyings, of course, after that eventful night some months before when she had outgeneralled and then defied Lemois, and concessions had been made, both sides yielding a little; but before we separated for our homes we felt sure that the old man either had or would surrender. "Well, let it be as you will," he had said with a sigh; "but not now. In the spring when the apple-blossoms are in bloom--and then perhaps you may come back." To me, however, who had stayed on for a few days, he had, late one afternoon, poured out his whole heart. The twilight had begun to settle in the Marmouset, and the last glow of the western sky creeping through the stained-glass windows was falling upon the old Spanish leather and gold crowned saints and figures, warming them into rich harmonies, when I had stolen inside the wonderful room to take one of my last looks--an old habit of mine in a place I love. There I found him hunched up in Herbert's chair at one corner of the fireplace, his head on his hand.