A favorite walk of his was along a winding road leading some distance out of the little town up a lofty hill, from the summit of which the eye could scan the sweeping circle of the waters, stretching out in its glittering wonder to the verge of dimness, or, inland, where miles and miles of fair pasture-land and vineyards spread away in gentle undulations, with smoke rising from hollows in which hamlets slept, and church spires clove the clear air, and airy villas crowned the pleasant hills. Alternate gleams of sea and land shot through the tall poplars that lined the road as it circled round the hill. At the top, buried amid trees, and fronted by a garden filled almost the year through with delicious flowers, was the Maison Plaquet, a sort of _café_, where visitors could procure a cup of coffee, a glass of _eau sucrée_, or the good wines _du pays_. This establishment was presided over by Mme. Plaquet, a buxom dame with a merry eye and kindly voice, whose pleasant face had become quite a part of the landscape. There was understood to be a M. Plaquet somewhere, but he did not often show himself to visitors. He left the whole business to madame, having a strong suspicion that there was no woman like her in the world, and spent most of his time trimming the flower-beds, pruning the trees, or tending to the vineyard. George was a frequent visitor at the Maison Plaquet. He would spend hours in the garden dreaming. Madame was won by his handsome face and the fixed sadness in his eyes, which always lighted up, however, in response to her genial greeting. She half suspected that it was something more than a love of nature which sent the _pauvre garçon_, as she called him, away from friends, and home, and family, to sit there day after day dreaming in her arbor, beautiful as it was. With the chatty good-nature which in a Frenchwoman never seems offensive, she would sometimes try to draw him out of himself, to learn something about him that might help her to lift the settled cloud off his handsome face. To Mme. Plaquet it seemed almost a sin against the good God to wear a cloudy face always. But George was so jealously reserved that she gave him up, with the secret conviction that it was love alone that could inflict so deep a wound on so young a heart, and that love alone could heal it.