tenderness or hope she strove thus to hood, nothing could suppress the
beauty of her luminous eyes; caressing eyes that belied her austere
manner. No sight of blood nor weariness, no insult had hardened them.
Even when their greenish depths went dark and wide with reminiscence, a
light lurked at the bottom--the reflection of something dancing. Yes,
everybody loved Mademoiselle Gaston.

For weeks we had seen it coming. She had told us of her engagement at
breakfast one Monday morning after a week-end visit to her married
sister in Paris. It had seemed a good business proposition. She
announced it as such, calmly, with a frankness that astonished my
American soul. We were pleased. She would have a château and money, and
a _de_ before her name. Best of all she would have peace and
companionship after her lonely struggles. On the whole we were very much
pleased. Madame de Vigny and her gentle niece were entirely delighted.
Noyon was vociferous in its approval and congratulations. I could have
wished--but at least I did not thrust any transatlantic notions into the
general contentment.

And I soon saw--no one could fail to see--the change that day by day
came over our reserved companion. The stern line of her lips relaxed. In
amazement one day we heard her laugh. Then her laughter began to break
forth on all occasions; and we listened to her singing above in her
room, and we smiled at each other. That tightness of her brow dissolved
in a carefree radiance. At work, she mixed up her faultless card
catalogues and laughed at her mistakes. Once, during our busy hours of
distribution, we caught her blithely granting the request of fat Mère
Copillet for a cook stove and thereupon absently presenting that jovial
dame with a pair of sabots, much too small for her portly foot, to the
amusement of all the good wives gathered in the Red Cross office. They