in
sympathy for the accused, suggested that she should be allowed to
explain herself in her own way; and she thereupon made the following
statement.

The first years of her marriage had been lonely; but her husband had
not been unkind to her. If she had had a child she would not have been
unhappy; but the days were long, and it rained too much.

It was true that her husband, whenever he went away and left her,
brought her a handsome present on his return; but this did not make up
for the loneliness. At least nothing had, till he brought her the little
brown dog from the East: after that she was much less unhappy. Her
husband seemed pleased that she was so fond of the dog; he gave her
leave to put her jewelled bracelet around its neck, and to keep it
always with her.

One day she had fallen asleep in her room, with the dog at her feet, as
his habit was. Her feet were bare and resting on his back. Suddenly she
was waked by her husband: he stood beside her, smiling not unkindly.

"You look like my great-grandmother, Juliane de Cornault, lying in the
chapel with her feet on a little dog," he said.

The analogy sent a chill through her, but she laughed and answered:
"Well, when I am dead you must put me beside her, carved in marble, with
my dog at my feet."

"Oho--we'll wait and see," he said, laughing also, but with his black
brows close together. "The dog is the emblem of fidelity."

"And do you doubt my right to lie with mine at my feet?"

"When I'm in doubt I find out," he answered. "I am an old man," he
added, "and people say I make you lead a lonely life. But I swear you
shall have your monument if you earn it."

"And I swear to be faithful," she returned, "if only for the sake of
having my little dog at my feet."

Not long afterward he went on business to the Quimper Assizes; and while
he was away his aunt, the widow of a great nobleman of the duchy, came
to spend a night at Kerfol on her way to the _pardon_ of Ste. Barbe.
She was a woman of piety and consequence, and much respected by Yves de
Cornault, and when she proposed to Anne to go with her to Ste. Barbe no
one could object, and even the chaplain declared himself in favour of
the pilgrimage. So Anne set out for Ste. Barbe, and there for the first
time she talked with Herve de Lanrivain. He had come once or twice to
Kerfol with his father, but she had never before exchanged a dozen words
with him. They did not talk for more than five minutes now: it