ient smiled with subtlety. There was a
flash in his eyes in the dusk of the wood like that of a wild animal
seen in a cave.

"Because I am your cousin--is it that I must not marry you? Pshaw!" he
said, "what of that? Am I not a servant of King Philip, and of some
favour with him? Also he with the Pope, who, though he hates him, dares
not refuse all his asking to the Right Hand of Holy Church."

Claire glanced behind her. The little path among the bushes was narrow,
but beyond the primrose sky of evening peeped through. Two steps, one
wild rush, and she would be out on the open brae-face, the heath and
juniper under foot, springy and close-matted--perfect running right to
the door of La Masane.

She launched her ultimatum.

"I will not wed you, whether you speak in jest or earnest. I would
rather marry Don Jordy, or his white mule, or one of Jean-Marie's
windmills. No, not if you got fifty dispensations from as many popes. I
am of the religion oppressed and persecuted--Huguenot, Calvinist,
Protestant. As my father was--as he lived and died, so will I live and
die!"

With a backward step she was gone, the bushes swishing about her. In a
moment she was out on the open slope, flying towards La Masane. There
was the Professor laboriously climbing up from the castle, his hat on
the back of his head, his staff in his hand, just as she had foreseen.
Good kind Professor, how she loved him!

There, at the door of the Fanal Mill, making signs to her with his arms,
signals as clumsy as the whirling of the great sails, now disconnected
and anchored for the night, was the Miller-Alcalde Jean-Marie, the
flour-dust doubtless in his beard and mapping the wrinkles of his honest
face. She loved him, too--she loved the flour-dust also, so glad was she
to get away from the Well of the Consolation.

But nearer even than Don Jordy, whose white mule disengaged itself from
the rocky wimples of the road to Elne (Claire loved Don Jordy and the
mule also, even more than she had said to Raphael, her cousin), there
appeared a lonely sentinel, motionless on a rock. A mere black figure it
was, wrapped in a great cloak, on his head the slouched hat of the
Roussillon shepherds, looped up at the side, and a huge dog couchant at
his feet.

"Jean-aux-Choux! Jean--Jean--Jean!" cried Claire. And she never could
explain how it came to pass that her arms were about Jean's neck, or why
there was a tear on her cheek. She did not know she had been weepi