red with gorgeous reflection. To-morrow, the fine spring morning which these ruddy lights prophesied, would rise serenely over the same roofs, and Margot would light her fire, and little Blanchette, out of her dreams, would awake joyfully to recollect that her troubles were all over. But where would Helen be? She did not know, but surely away from Latour, away from everything she knew, out into the world, which always figured itself before her as darkness--the gloom of night, the clanging of a great train, pursuing its noisy precipitate way through an unseen country, to the unknown out of the known. She stood for a moment at the door, looking wistfully round her at the familiar scene. The houses with their thatched roofs rose dark against the great glow of redness in the west. In the distance the homely spire of the church rose up protecting over them; voices were in the air, all cheerful, confused, half heard, with now and then one distincter note striking in, as by turns one figure would start up and separate itself from the little company still lingering in front of the Lion d’Or. Somewhere near a woman was singing a baby to sleep, in a sweet drowsy voice, broken by the rock of her chair upon the wooden floor. On the other hand a group of little truants, pattering in their _sabots_, were being pursued homewards to bed by the half-laughing, half-angry mother. Helen looked round her with wistful eyes, casting a last glance along the road which led to the _château_, the most dear of all. Along this road Antoine was sauntering slowly, his hands in his pockets, looking back as he went, with his eyes always fixed on M. Goudron’s house. His was the only non-sympathetic figure in all the scene. It broke the spell. Helen turned from him and breathed her farewell to the village in one long sigh. The prattle of Janey was the first thing she heard when she went in. The child was seated on her father’s knee. She had been telling him a story about Margot’s children, with whom she had been playing. “Petit-Jean does not know what a big city is, papa; he thinks Paris is like Laroche” (Laroche was the next village, and had a street twice as long as that of Latour, and was looked upon as almost a _chef-lieu_). “He said, was England like the little island in the pond at the _château_? Margot’s little children they are very ignorant, they don’t know anything, papa.” “And my little Janey knows a great deal?” he said laughing, yet with a thrill of another sentiment in his voice; “but everybody, my pet, has not travelled like you.” “No,” said Janey, complacently. “Only think, I came from India when I was a little tiny baby--if I could only recollect I should know India too, and then London, and then that place on the sea where we bought our things, and then Sainte-Barbe, and then---- Papa, after all this, when are we doing home?” “Should you like to do home, Janey?” This time the laugh was so broken that it was more like a sob.