the end. To this was presently added the word that De la Foret had been
beheaded. But one day she learned that the Comtesse de Montgomery was
sheltered by the Governor, Sir Hugh Pawlett, her kinsman, at Mont Orgueil
Castle. Thither she went in fear from her refuge at Rozel, and was
admitted to the Comtesse. There she learned the joyful truth that De la
Foret had not been slain, and was in hiding on the coast of Normandy.

The long waiting was a sore trial, yet laughter was often upon her lips
henceforth. The peasants, the farmers and fishermen of Jersey, at first
--as they have ever been--little inclined towards strangers, learned at
last to look for her in the fields and upon the shore, and laughed in
response, they knew not why, to the quick smiling of her eyes. She even
learned to speak their unmusical but friendly Norman-Jersey French.
There were at least a half-dozen fishermen who, for her, would have gone
at night straight to the Witches' Rock in St. Clement's Bay--and this was
bravery unmatched.

It came to be known along the coast that "Ma'm'selle" was waiting for a
lover fleeing from the French coast. This gave her fresh interest in the
eyes of the serfs and sailors and their women folk, who at first were not
inclined towards the Huguenot maiden, partly because she was French, and
partly because she was not a Catholic. But even these, when they saw
that she never talked religiously, that she was fast learning to speak
their own homely patois, and that in the sickness of their children she
was untiring in her kindness, forgave the austerity of the gloomy-browed
old man her father, who spoke to them distantly, or never spoke at all;
and her position was secure. Then, upon the other hand, the gentry of
the manors, seeing the friendship grow between her and the Comtesse de
Montgomery at Mont Orgueil Castle, made courteous advances towards her
father, and towards herself through him.