Her blue eyes were very childish and earnest. For all my love of Paragot, I suddenly felt something like pity for her, as for one who had undertaken a responsibility that weighed too heavily on slender shoulders. For the first time it struck me that Paragot and Joanna might not be a perfectly matched couple. Intuition prompted me to say:-- "My master is utterly happy, but you must give him a little time to accustom himself to the new order of things." "That's it," she said. Then there was a pause. "You are such a wise boy," she continued, "that perhaps you may be able to do something for me. I can't do it myself--and it's horrid of me to talk about it--but do you think you might suggest to him that people of our class don't visit the Black Boar? I don't mind it a bit; but other people--my cousin Major Walters said something a day or two ago--and it hurt. They don't understand Gaston's Continental ways. It is natural for a man to go to a café in France; but in England, things are so different." I promised to convey to Paragot the tabu of the Black Boar, and then I asked her which she preferred, England or France. She shivered, and a gleam of frost returned to her eyes. "I never want to see France again. I was so unhappy there. I am trying to persuade Mr. de Nérac to live in London. He can find as much scope for his art there as in Paris, can't he?" "Surely," said I. "And you'll come too," she said with the flash of gaiety that was one of her charms. "You'll have a beautiful studio near by and we'll all be happy together." She jumped off the painting stool and having bidden me light the gas, resumed her task of embroidering the stole, by the fireside. "It's pretty, isn't it?" she asked, holding it up for my inspection. I agreed. She had considerable talent for art needlework. "Gaston doesn't appreciate it," she remarked, laughing. "He disapproves of clergymen." "They have scarcely been in his line," I answered apologetically. "They will have to be. Oh, you'll see. I'll make him a model Englishman before very long." "I'm afraid you will find it rather difficult, Madame," said I. "Do you think I'm afraid of difficulties? Isn't everything difficult? Is it easy for you to get everything to come out on that canvas just as you want it? If you could dash it off in a minute it wouldn't be worth doing. As you yourself said, I'll have to give Gaston time." I seated myself on the fender-seat close by her chair, and for some minutes watched the clever needle work its golden way through the white silk. No one has ever had such dainty fingers and delicate wrists.