flounces destined
for Sidonie's frock, and the little cripple never had plied her needle
with such good heart.

In truth little Desiree was not Delobelle's daughter to no purpose.

She inherited her father's faculty of retaining his illusions, of hoping
on to the end and even beyond.

While Frantz was dilating upon his woe, Desire was thinking that, when
Sidonie was gone, he would come every day, if it were only to talk about
the absent one; that she would have him there by her side, that they
would sit up together waiting for "father," and that, perhaps, some
evening, as he sat looking at her, he would discover the difference
between the woman who loves you and the one who simply allows herself to
be loved.

Thereupon the thought that every stitch taken in the frock tended
to hasten the departure which she anticipated with such impatience
imparted extraordinary activity to her needle, and the unhappy lover
ruefully watched the flounces and ruffles piling up about her, like
little pink, white-capped waves.

When the pink frock was finished, Mademoiselle Chebe started for
Savigny.

The chateau of M. Gardinois was built in the valley of the Orge, on the
bank of that capriciously lovely stream, with its windmills, its little
islands, its dams, and its broad lawns that end at its shores.

The chateau, an old Louis-Quinze structure, low in reality, although
made to appear high by a pointed roof, had a most depressing aspect,
suggestive of aristocratic antiquity; broad steps, balconies with rusty
balustrades, old urns marred by time, wherein the flowers stood out
vividly against the reddish stone. As far as the eye could see, the
walls stretched away, decayed and crumbling, descending gradually toward
the stream. The chateau overlooked them, with its high, slated roofs,
the farmhouse, with its red tiles, and the superb park, with its
lindens, ash-trees, poplars and chestnuts growing confusedly together
in a dense black mass, cut here and there by the arched openings of the
paths.

But the charm of the old place was the water, which enlivened its
silence and gave character to its beautiful views. There were at
Savigny, to say nothing of the river, many springs, fountains, and
ponds, in which the sun sank to rest in all his glory; and they formed a
suitable setting for that venerable mansion, green and mossy as it was,
and slightly worn away, like a stone on the edge of a brook.

Unluckily, at Savigny, as in most o