close to his road,--two young girls sitting on the ground peeling
slender willow stems for baskets. It was Annette Gaspard and Victorine;
and at the sound of a horse's feet they both leaned forward and looked
down into the road.

"Oh, see, Victorine!" Annette cried; "a brave rider goes there. Who can
he be? I wonder if he goes to the mill? Perhaps my father will keep him
to dinner."

At the first glance Victorine recognized Willan Blaycke, but she gave no
sign to her friend that she knew him.

"He sitteth his horse like one asleep," she said, "or in a dream. I call
him not a brave rider. He hath forgotten something," she added; "see, he
is turning about!" And with keen disappointment the girls saw the
horseman wheel suddenly, and gallop back on the road he had come. At the
last moment, by a mighty effort, Willan had wrenched his will to the
decision that he would not seek Victorine at the mill.

And this was why, when her aunt told her that he had been at the inn
during their absence, Victorine shrugged her shoulders, and said with so
pleased a laugh, "Eh! that is good." She understood by a lightning
intuition all which had happened,--that he had ridden towards the mill
seeking her, and had changed his mind at the last, and gone away. But
she kept her own counsel, told nobody that she had seen him, and said in
her mischievous heart, "He will be back before long."

And so he was; but not even Victorine, with all her confidence in the
strength of the hold she had so suddenly acquired on him, could have
imagined how soon and with what purpose he would return. On the evening