ow voice, sighing;
"and now after two days or three thou wilt be gone."

Willan sighed also, but did not speak. The words, "I will always ride by
thy side, Victorine," were on his lips, but he felt himself still
withheld from speaking them.

The visit at the mill was unsatisfactory. The elder Gaspard was away,
and young Pierre was curt and surly. The sight of Victorine riding
familiarly, and with an evident joyous pride, by the side of one of the
richest men in the country, and a young man at that,--and a young man,
moreover, who looked and behaved as if he were in love with his
companion,--how could the poor miller be expected to be cordial and
unconstrained with such a sight before his eyes! Annette also was more
overawed even than Victorine had desired she should be by the sight of
the handsome stranger,--so overawed, and withal perhaps a little
curious, that she was dumb and awkward; and as for _Mere_ Gaspard, she
never under any circumstances had a word to say. So the visit was very
stupid, and everybody felt ill at ease,--especially Willan, who had lost
his temper in the beginning at a speech of Pierre's to Victorine, which
seemed to his jealous sense too familiar.

"I thought thou never wouldst take leave," he said ill-naturedly to
Victorine, as they rode away.

Victorine turned towards him with an admirably counterfeited expression
of surprise. "Oh, sir," she said, "I did think I ought to wait for thee
to take leave. I was dying with the desire I had to be back in the woods
again; and only when I could not bear it any longer, did I bethink me to
say that my aunt expected us back to dinner."

Long they lingered on the river-banks on their way home. Even the
plotting brain of Victorine was not insensible to the charm of the sky,
the air, the budding foliage, and the myriads of blossoms. "Oh, sir,"
she said, "I think there never was such a day as this before!"

"I know there never was," replied Willan, looking at her with an
expression which was key to his words. But the daughter of Jeanne Dubois
was not to be wooed by any vague sentimentalisms. There was one sentence
which she was intently waiting to hear Willan Blaycke speak. Anything
short of that Mademoiselle Victorine was too innocent to comprehend.

"Sweet child!" thought Willan to himself, "she doth not know the speech
of lovers. I mistrust that if I wooed her outright, she would be
afraid."

It was long past noon when they reached the Golden Pear.