to be thinking of
nothing, but who is reflecting on things in general so deeply, that her
artifice is unfailing. As a result of this profound meditation, Rosalie
thought she would go to confession. Next morning, after Mass, she had
a brief interview with the Abbe Giroud at Saint-Pierre, and managed so
ingeniously that the hour of her confession was fixed for Sunday morning
at half-past seven, before the eight o'clock Mass. She committed herself
to a dozen fibs in order to find herself, just for once, in the church
at the hour when the lawyer came to Mass. Then she was seized with an
impulse of extreme affection for her father; she went to see him in
his workroom, and asked him for all sorts of information on the art of
turning, ending by advising him to turn larger pieces, columns. After
persuading her father to set to work on some twisted pillars, one of the
difficulties of the turner's art, she suggested that he should make
use of a large heap of stones that lay in the middle of the garden to
construct a sort of grotto on which he might erect a little temple or
Belvedere in which his twisted pillars could be used and shown off to
all the world.

At the climax of the pleasure the poor unoccupied man derived from this
scheme, Rosalie said, as she kissed him, "Above all, do not tell mamma
who gave you the notion; she would scold me."

"Do not be afraid!" replied Monsieur de Watteville, who groaned as
bitterly as his daughter under the tyranny of the terrible descendant of
the Rupts.

So Rosalie had a certain prospect of seeing ere long a charming
observatory built, whence her eye would command the lawyer's private
room. And there are men for whose sake young girls can carry out such
masterstrokes of diplomacy, while, for the most part, like Albert
Savaron, they know it not.

The Sunday so impatiently looked for arrived, and Rosalie dressed with
such carefulness as made Mariette, the ladies'-maid, smile.

"It is the first time I ever knew mademoiselle to be so fidgety," said
Mariette.

"It strikes me," said Rosalie, with a glance at Mariette, which brought
poppies to her cheeks, "that you too are more particular on some days
than on others."

As she went down the steps, across the courtyard, and through the gates,
Rosalie's heart beat, as everybody's does in anticipation of a great
event. Hitherto, she had never known what it was to walk in the streets;
for a moment she had felt as though her mother must read her