She had foreseen it; she was glad of it; and yet for the instant it was
a pang to her.

"I am very thankful," said Bernadou, with a flash of joy on his face. He
was independent of his grandmother; he could make enough to marry upon
by his daily toil, and he had a little store of gold and silver in his
bank in the thatch, put by for a rainy day; but he would have no more
thought of going against her will than he would have thought of lifting
his hand against her. In the primitive homesteads of the Berceau de
Dieu filial reverence was still accounted the first of virtues, yet the
simplest and the most imperative.

"I will go see Margot this evening," said Reine Allix, after a little
pause. "She is a good girl and a brave, and of pure heart and fair name.
You have chosen well, my grandson."

Bernadou stooped his tall, fair, curly head, and she laid her hands on
him and blessed him.

That evening, as the sun set, Reine Allix kept her word, and went to the
young maiden who had allured the eyes and heart of Bernadou. Margot was
an orphan; she had not a penny to her dower; she had been brought up on
charity, and she dwelt now in the family of the largest landowner of the
place, a miller with numerous offspring, and several head of cattle,
and many stretches of pasture and of orchard. Margot worked for a hard
master, living indeed as one of the family, but sharply driven all day
long at all manner of housework and field work. Reine Allix had kept her
glance on her, through some instinctive sense of the way that Bernadou's
thoughts were turning, and she had seen much to praise, nothing to
chide, in the young girl's modest, industrious, cheerful, uncomplaining