"Or the Bailly must--eh, Madame?" replied d'Avranche, and, stooping, he offered his hand to the child. Glancing up inquiringly at her mother, she took it. He held hers in a clasp of good nature. The child was so demure, one could scarcely think her capable of tossing the Bailly's hat into the stream; yet looking closely, there might be seen in her eyes a slumberous sort of fire, a touch of mystery. They were neither blue nor grey, but a mingling of both, growing to the most tender, greyish sort of violet. Down through generations of Huguenot refugees had passed sorrow and fighting and piety and love and occasional joy, until in the eyes of this child they all met, delicately vague, and with the wistfulness of the early morning of life. "What is your name, little lady?" asked d'Avranche of the child. "Guida, sir," she answered simply. "Mine is Philip. Won't you call me Philip?" She flashed a look at her mother, regarded him again, and then answered: "Yes, Philip--sir." D'Avranche wanted to laugh, but the face of the child was sensitive and serious, and he only smiled. "Say 'Yes, Philip', won't you?" he asked. "Yes, Philip," came the reply obediently. After a moment of speech with Madame Landresse, Philip stooped to say good-bye to the child. "Good-bye, Guida." A queer, mischievous little smile flitted over her face--a second, and it was gone. "Good-bye, sir--Philip," she said, and they parted. Her last words kept ringing in his ears as he made his way homeward. "Good-bye, sir--Philip" --the child's arrangement of words was odd and amusing, and at the same time suggested something more. "Good-bye, Sir Philip," had a different meaning, though the words were the same. "Sir Philip--eh?" he said to himself, with a jerk of the head--"I'll be more than that some day." CHAPTER II The night came down with leisurely gloom. A dim starlight pervaded rather than shone in the sky; Nature seemed somnolent and gravely meditative. It brooded as broods a man who is seeking his way through a labyrinth of ideas to a conclusion still evading him. This sense of cogitation enveloped land and sea, and was as tangible to feeling as human presence. At last the night seemed to wake from reverie. A movement, a thrill, ran through the spangled vault of dusk and sleep, and seemed to pass over the world, rousing the sea and the earth. There was no wind, apparently no breath of air, yet the leaves of the trees moved, the weather-vanes turned slightly, the animals in the byres roused themselves, and slumbering folk opening their eyes, turned over in their beds, and dropped into a troubled doze again. Presently there came a long moaning sound from the tide, not loud but rather mysterious and distant--a plaint, a threatening, a warning, a prelude?