nce, or some flower beside the
path, always with the unfailing goodness, the same delicate design in
all that he did; the intuitive sense of this woman's wellbeing seemed to
be innate in him, and as much, nay, perhaps more, a part of his being as
the pulse of his own life.

The patient and her doctor went step for step. There was nothing strange
for them in a sympathy which seemed to have existed since the day when
they first walked together. One will swayed them both; they stopped as
their senses received the same impression; every word and every glance
told of the same thought in either mind. They had climbed up through the
vineyards, and now they turned to sit on one of the long white stones,
quarried out of the caves in the hillside; but Julie stood awhile gazing
out over the landscape.

"What a beautiful country!" she cried. "Let us put up a tent and live
here. Victor, Victor, do come up here!"

M. d'Aiglemont answered by a halloo from below. He did not, however,
hurry himself, merely giving his wife a glance from time to time when
the windings of the path gave him a glimpse of her. Julie breathed
the air with delight. She looked up at Arthur, giving him one of those
subtle glances in which a clever woman can put the whole of her thought.

"Ah, I should like to live here always," she said. "Would it be possible
to tire of this beautiful valley?--What is the picturesque river called,
do you know?"

"That is the Cise."

"The Cise," she repeated. "And all this country below, before us?"

"Those are the low hills above the Cher."

"And away to the right? Ah, that is Tours. Only see how fine the
cathedral towers look in the distance."

She was silent, and let fall the hand which she had stretched out
towards the view upon Arthur's. Both admired the wide landscape made up
of so much blended beauty. Neither of them spoke. The murmuring voice of
the river, the pure air, and the cloudless heaven were all in tune with
their thronging thoughts and their youth and the love in their hearts.

"Oh! _mon Dieu_, how I love this country!" Julie continued, with growing
and ingenuous enthusiasm. "You lived here for a long while, did you
not?" she added after a pause.

A thrill ran through Lord Grenville at her words.

"It was down there," he said, in a melancholy voice, indicating as he
spoke a cluster of walnut trees by the roadside, "that I, a prisoner,
saw you for the first time."

"Yes, but even at that time I felt