Helen and the girls at the _château_, in consequence of Sir John’s opposition. Perhaps it gave Cécile her first experience of the difficulties that attend marriage with an Englishman. She did her best to be loyal both to her friend and her future husband, but the conflict was not without pain. But what did any such paltry pain matter in the opening of the new day which came to Helen out of the clouds of the morning, sweet and dazzling in all the glories of life and spring? Her oldest friends put her hand into her lover’s hand, and his father said the blessing over them. Let all the Sir Johns in the world object, what harm could it do? They went to Paris and bought the bride her Indian outfit,--she who had nothing. Helen’s hundred a-year had accumulated as her father had said. It came from her mother, and was honestly hers, and there was no reason why she should not use it. And it was at Paris that the young pair were married; and from thence that they set out to their distant home. But before they left Latour there was a pretty ceremony, at which their presence was indispensable. Helen and little Janey put aside their black dresses and put on white ones to honour Blanchette’s marriage. And when the religious ceremony took place, after the first day’s performance at the Mairie, the bride herself, holding her husband by the hand, turned aside and led the way among all the iron crosses on the graves to the place where _l’Anglais_ lay under a green mound, without any name. He had forfeited his name, his good fame, and honour. Nevertheless little Blanchette wept over the mound, and, kneeling down in her veil and myrtle crown, laid a white wreath upon the grass, and said a prayer for his soul. Did it do him any good in those dark countries whither the fugitive had taken flight “unhousel’d, disappointed, unanel’d”? “Ma bonne, douce demoiselle,” said Blanchette amid her tears, “how he was good to us, monsieur votre père! Never shall a week pass when you are far, far away from Latour, but Baptiste and me, we will say a prayer for the repose of his soul.” The others said nothing, but stood silent about the nameless grave. What harm he had done, what suffering he had caused! and yet he was but as other men, and gratitude gave him a prayer and a tear. THE END. PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.