She had, however, never listened to flatterers, and only one youth of
Jersey had footing in the cottage. This was Ranulph Delagarde, who had
gone in and out at his will, but that was casually and not too often,
and he was discreet and spoke no word of love. Sometimes she talked to
him of things concerning the daily life with which she did not care to
trouble Sieur de Mauprat. In ways quite unknown to her he had made her
life easier for her. She knew that her mother had thought of Ranulph for
her husband, although she blushed whenever--but it was not often--the
idea came to her. She remembered how her mother had said that Ranulph
would be a great man in the island some day; that he had a mind above all
the youths in St. Heliers; that she would rather see Ranulph a master
ship-builder than a babbling ecrivain in the Rue des Tres Pigeons, a
smirking leech, or a penniless seigneur with neither trade nor talent.
Guida was attracted to Ranulph through his occupation, for she loved
strength, she loved all clean and wholesome trades; that of the mason,
of the carpenter, of the blacksmith, and most of the ship-builder. Her
father, whom she did not remember, had been a ship-builder, and she knew
that he had been a notable man; every one had told her that.

.........................

"She has met her destiny," say the village gossips, when some man in the
dusty procession of life sees a woman's face in the pleasant shadow of a
home, and drops out of the ranks to enter at her doorway.

Was Ranulph to be Guida's destiny?

Handsome and stalwart though he looked as he entered the cottage in the
Place du Vier Prison, on that September morning after the rescue of the
chevalier, his tool-basket on his shoulder, and his brown face enlivened