some one spoke to Virginie,--nay, laid his hand upon her arm,--whose
dress and aspect (he had emerged out of a side-street) Pierre did not
know; but, after a start, and (Pierre could fancy) a little scream,
Virginie recognised the stranger, and the two turned up the side street
whence the man had come. Pierre stole swiftly to the corner of this
street; no one was there: they had disappeared up some of the alleys.
Pierre returned home to excite his mother's infinite surprise. But they
had hardly done talking, when Virginie returned, with a colour and a
radiance in her face, which they had never seen there since her father's
death."




CHAPTER VII.


"I have told you that I heard much of this story from a friend of the
Intendant of the De Crequys, whom he met with in London. Some years
afterwards--the summer before my lord's death--I was travelling with him
in Devonshire, and we went to see the French prisoners of war on
Dartmoor. We fell into conversation with one of them, whom I found out
to be the very Pierre of whom I had heard before, as having been involved
in the fatal story of Clement and Virginie, and by him I was told much of
their last days, and thus I learnt how to have some sympathy with all
those who were concerned in those terrible events; yes, even with the
younger Morin himself, on whose behalf Pierre spoke warmly, even after so
long a time had elapsed.

"For when the younger Morin called at the porter's lodge, on the evening