e a dark stream flowed to the sea. But the walls of the cottage were
dry, for, many years before, Guida's mother had herself seen it built
from cellar-rock to the linked initials over the doorway, stone by
stone, and every corner of it was as free from damp as the mielles
stretching in sandy desolation behind to the Mont es Pendus, where the
law had its way with the necks of criminals.

In early childhood Madame Landresse had come with her father into exile
from the sunniest valley in the hills of Chambery, where flowers and
trees and sunshine had been her life. Here, in the midst of blank and
grim stone houses, her heart travelled back to the chateau where she
lived before the storm of persecution drove her forth; and she spent her
heart and her days in making this cottage, upon the western border of
St. Heliers, a delight to the quiet eye.

The people of the island had been good to her and her dead husband
during the two short years of their married life, and had caused her to
love the land which necessity made her home. Her child was brought up
after the fashion of the better class of Jersey children, wore what
they wore, ate what they ate, lived as they lived. She spoke the country
patois in the daily life, teaching it to Guida at the same time that she
taught her pure French and good English, which she herself had learned
as a child, and cultivated later here. She had done all in her power
to make Guida Jersiaise in instinct and habit, and to beget in her a
contented disposition. There could be no future for her daughter outside
this little green oasis of exile, she thought. Not that she lacked
ambition, but in the circumstances she felt that ambition could yield
but one harvest to her child, which was marriage. She herself had
married a poor man, a master builder of ships, like Maitre Ranulph
Delagarde, but she had been very happy while he lived. Her husband
had come of an ancient Jersey family, who were in Normandy before the
Conqueror was born; a man of genius almost in his craft, but scarcely
a gentleman according to the standard of her father, the distinguished
exile and now retired watchmaker. If Guida should chance to be as
fortunate as herself, she could ask no more.

She had watched the child anxiously, for the impulses of Guida's
temperament now and then broke forth in indignation as wild as her tears
and in tears as wild as her laughter. As the girl grew in health and
stature, she tried, tenderly, stre