"Here," said Gilberte, laughingly, taking a flower from her belt, "here is the loveliest rose from my garden; perhaps its fragrance may possess the salutary power of putting its enemy's prudence to sleep and softening his ferocity. Leave it on his table, try to induce him to admire it and smell it. He is a horticulturist, but I doubt if he has in his great garden so fine a specimen as this product of my last year's graft. If I were a châtelaine of the good old days which Janille regrets, perhaps I could invoke a spell that would impart a magic power to this flower. But, being a poor girl, I can only pray to God to instill mercy into that cruel heart, even as he caused the dew to fall and open this rose-bud." "Must I leave my talisman, pray?" said Emile, hiding the rose in his breast: "may I not keep it to use another time?" The tone in which he asked this question and the emotion discernible upon his face caused Gilberte a moment's artless surprise. She looked at him with an uncertain expression, unable as yet to understand the value he attached to the flower taken from her girdle. She tried to smile, as at a jest, but felt that the blood rose to her cheeks; and as Janille reappeared, she made no reply. Emile, drunk with love, descended with reckless speed the dangerous path down the hill. When he was at the foot he ventured to turn, and saw Gilberte following him with her eyes from her rose-covered terrace, her hands apparently busied trimming her favorite plants. She surely was not dressed more daintily than usual that day. Her dress was clean, like everything that passed through Janille's scrupulous hands; but it had been washed and ironed so many times that the color had changed from lilac to that indefinable tint which the hortensia assumes just as it withers. Her superb golden hair, rebelling against the fetters imposed upon it, escaped from its confinement and formed a sort of halo of gold about her head. A snow-white, tightly-fitting chemisette surrounded her lovely neck and suggested the graceful outlines of her shoulders. In Emile's eyes she was resplendent in the sunbeams falling full upon her, for she made no effort to shield herself from them. Sunburn was powerless to impair that rich carnation, and her pale, faded costume made her seem all the fresher. Moreover, the imagination of a lover of twenty years is too rich to be embarrassed by a mere matter of dress. That faded gown assumed in Emile's eyes a hue more gorgeous than that of all the richest stuffs of the Orient, and he wondered why the painters of the Renaissance had never been able to clothe their smiling madonnas and their triumphant saints so magnificently. He stood as if nailed to the spot for several minutes, and, except for the impatience of his horse tossing his head and pawing the ground, he would have forgotten entirely that Monsieur de Boisguilbault had another hour to wait for him.