me to time, when she was absorbed by a
particular idea, she bit this lower lip with her white upper teeth,
making the blood run in tiny red veins under the delicate skin. In her
supple form there was no little pride, with gravity also, which she
inherited from the bold Icelandic sailors, her ancestors. The expression
of her eyes was both steady and gentle.

Her cap was in the shape of a cockle-shell, worn low on the brow, and
drawn back on either side, showing thick tresses of hair about the ears,
a head-dress that has remained from remote times and gives quite an
olden look to the women of Paimpol.

One felt instinctively that she had been reared differently than the
poor old woman to whom she gave the name of grandmother, but who is
reality was but a distant great-aunt.

She was the daughter of M. Mevel, a former Icelander, a bit of a
freebooter, who had made a fortune by bold undertakings out at sea.

The fine room where the letter had been just written was hers; a new
bed, such as townspeople have, with muslin lace-edged curtains, and on
the stone walls a light-coloured paper, toning down the irregularities
of the granite; overhead a coating of whitewash covered the great beams
that revealed the antiquity of the abode; it was the home of well-to-do
folk, and the windows looked out upon the old gray market-place of
Paimpol, where the _pardons_ are held.

"Is it done, Granny Yvonne? Have you nothing else to tell him?"

"No, my lass, only I would like you to add a word of greeting to young
Gaos."

"Young Gaos" was otherwise called Yann. The proud beautiful girl had
blushed very red when she wrote those words. And as soon as they were
added at the bottom of the page, in a running hand, she rose and turned
her head aside as if to look at some very interesting object out on the
market-place.

Standing, she was rather tall; her waist was modelled in a clinging
bodice, as perfectly fitting as that of a fashionable dame. In spite
of her cap, she looked like a real lady. Even her hands, without being
conventionally small, were white and delicate, never having touched
rough work.

True, she had been at first little _Gaud_ (Daisy), paddling bare-footed
in the water, motherless, almost wholly neglected during the season
of the fisheries, which her father spent in Iceland; a pretty,
untidy, obstinate girl, but growing vigorous and strong in the bracing
sea-breeze. In those days she had been sheltered, during the fine