"On a fine summer evening about two years after the sad day that had seen the departure of Edmee and her mother from their beloved home, Madame Germain, with her husband and son, was sitting on the bench in front of their cottage--the cottage which is at present, at the time I am writing, inhabited by Mathurine Le Blanc and her sons, standing, as I think I have already said, some short way out of the village--enjoying a little rest after the labour of the day. Not that they were altogether idle. The mother was of course knitting, the father smoking his pipe, if that can be considered an occupation, and the son was holding an open letter in his hand, from which he had just been reading aloud. "`Yes,' he said, `in a few days from now we may certainly expect her. She was to leave the next week, my lady says, and that is a fortnight ago.' "`Old Ludovic was to bring her a part of the way, was he not?' said Germain, taking his pipe out of his mouth; `I wish he had been coming all the way. I should have liked a talk about many things with the good old man.' "`Ah yes,' agreed his wife, `and so should I. But think of the long journey, Germain, and he is getting very old.' "`Besides, he would never have agreed to leave my lady and her daughter for so long,' said Pierre. `Think--now that Nanette has left them, old Ludovic is the only one of their own people about them! Oh, how I wish my lady would make up her mind to come home!' "`Perhaps she cannot--she hints as much,' said Madame Germain. `You know the Marquis is the dear child's guardian bylaw, and he is an obstinate man once he takes a thing in his head. But we shall hear more from Nanette--more, perhaps, than the Countess likes to write; letters are risky things, to my way of thinking.' "`And these are ticklish times,' said father Germain. He was a man of few words, and therefore what he did say carried the more weight. "`Yes, father, you are right,' said Pierre, and unconsciously he dropped his voice and spoke in a lower key. `Our good cure was telling me some strange things to-day. The bad feeling is spreading fast. There was a chateau fired last week not very far from Sarinet. To be sure it was put out and no lives lost; but there was a good deal of destruction done, and it shows that it is coming nearer.' "`But here at Valmont,' said his mother, always slow to believe ill, `I could _never_ be afraid. Think how steady and industrious a set our people are--how loyal and faithful they have always shown themselves; and with good reason, for have they not ever been treated most generously and kindly by our masters?'