l with Jean Touzel was practically to be alone, for
Maitresse Aimable never talked; and Jean knew Guida's ways, knew
when she wished to be quiet. In Jersey phrase, he saw beyond his
spectacles--great brass-rimmed things, giving a droll, childlike kind of
wisdom to his red rotund face.

Having issued her invitation, Maitresse Aimable smiled placidly and
seemed about to leave, when, all at once, without any warning, she
lowered herself like a vast crate upon the veille, and sat there looking
at Guida.

At first the grave inquiry of her look startled Guida. She was beginning
to know that sensitive fear assailing those tortured by a secret. How
she loathed this secrecy! How guilty she now felt, where, indeed, no
guilt was! She longed to call aloud her name, her new name, from the
housetops.

The voice of Maitresse Aimable roused her. Her ponderous visitor had
made a discovery which had yet been made by no other human being. Her
own absurd romance, her ancient illusion, had taught her to know when
love lay behind another woman's face. And after her fashion, Maitresse
Aimable loved Jean Touzel as it is given to few to love.

"I was sixteen when I fell in love; you're seventeen--you," she said.
"Ah bah, so it goes!"

Guida's face crimsoned. What--how much did Maitresse Aimable know? By
what necromancy had this fat, silent fisher-wife learned the secret
which was the heart of her life, the soul of her being--which was
Philip? She was frightened, but danger made her cautious.

"Can you guess who it is?" she asked, without replying directly to the
oblique charge.

"It is not Maitre Ranulph," answered her friendly inquisitor; "it is not
that M'sieu' Detricand, the vaurien." Guida flushed with annoyance. "It
is not that farmer Blampied, with fifty vergees, all potatoes; it is not
M'sieu' Janvrin, that bat'd'lagoule of an ecrivain. Ah bah, so it goes!"

"Who is it, then?" persisted Guida. "Eh ben, that is the thing!"

"How can you tell that one is in love, Maitresse Aimable?" persisted
Guida.

The other smiled with a torturing placidity, then opened her mouth;
but nothing came of it. She watched Guida moving about the kitchen
abstractedly. Her eye wandered to the racllyi, with its flitches of
bacon, to the dreschiaux and the sanded floor, to the great Elizabethan
oak chair, and at last back to Guida, as though through her the lost
voice might be charmed up again.

The eyes of the two met now, fairly, firmly; and Guida