thence to a spruce-fir, swinging from bough to bough with marvelous
dexterity.

"Do not follow her," said M. Fanjat, addressing the colonel. "You
would arouse a feeling of aversion in her which might become
insurmountable; I will help you to make her acquaintance and to tame
her. Sit down on the bench. If you pay no heed whatever to her, poor
child, it will not be long before you will see her come nearer by
degrees to look at you."

"That _she_ should not know me; that she should fly from me!" the
colonel repeated, sitting down on a rustic bench and leaning his back
against a tree that overshadowed it.

He bowed his head. The doctor remained silent. Before very long the
Countess stole softly down from her high refuge in the spruce-fir,
flitting like a will-o'-the-wisp; for as the wind stirred the boughs,
she lent herself at times to the swaying movements of the trees. At
each branch she stopped and peered at the stranger; but as she saw him
sitting motionless, she at length jumped down to the grass, stood a
while, and came slowly across the meadow. When she took up her
position by a tree about ten paces from the bench, M. Fanjat spoke to
the colonel in a low voice.

"Feel in my pocket for some lumps of sugar," he said, "and let her see
them, she will come; I willingly give up to you the pleasure of giving
her sweetmeats. She is passionately fond of sugar, and by that means
you will accustom her to come to you and to know you."

"She never cared for sweet things when she was a woman," Philip