Victorine was sobbing now. "Oh," she cried, "what ill luck is mine! I
have angered thee; and my aunt did especially charge me that I was to
treat thee well. She doth never speak an ill word of thee, sir, never!
Do not thou charge my hasty words to her." And Victorine leaned out of
the window, and looked up in Willan Blaycke's face with a look which she
had had good reason to know was well calculated to move a man's heart.

Willan Blaycke had led a singularly pure life. He was of a reticent and
partly phlegmatic nature; though he looked so like his father, he
resembled him little in temperament. This calmness of nature, added to a
deep-seated pride, had stood him in stead of firmly rooted principles of
virtue, and had carried him safe through all the temptations of his
unprotected and lonely youth. He had the air and bearing, and had had in
most things the experience, of a man of the world; and yet he was as
ignorant of the wily ways of a wily woman as if he had never been out of
the wilderness. Victorine's tears smote on him poignantly.

"Thou poor child!" he said most kindly, "do not weep. Thou hast done no
harm. I bear no ill will to thine aunt, and never did; and if I had,
thou wouldst have disarmed it. This inn seems to me no place for a young
maiden like thee."

Victorine glanced cautiously around her, and whispered: "It were
ungrateful in me to say as much; but oh, sir, if thou didst but know how
I wish myself back in the convent! I like not the ways of this place;
and I fear so much the men who are often here. When thou didst speak at
first I did think thou wert like them; but now I perceive that thou art
quite different. Thou seemest to me like the men of whom Sister Clarice
did tell me." Victorine stopped, called up a blush to her cheeks, and
said: "But I must not stay talking with thee. My aunt will be looking