arbara declared herself perfectly able to go home in
the afternoon as had been arranged.

"What should prevent us?" she asked, when after a rest and something to
eat she came down to the terrace. "It was only a long race, and a
fright which I quite deserved."

"Yes, indeed, a fright!" and the Frenchwoman threw up her hands. "Such
fear as I felt when I came out to see the tide and saw you fleeing
before it. Your aunt!--Your mother!--My charge! Such visions fleeted
before my eyes. But _never, never, never_ will I trust you with Jean
any more," and she cast a vengeful look at the widower and his son, who
were seated a little farther off.

"But it wasn't his fault at all," the girl explained. "On the
contrary, I proposed it, and he joined me out of kindness. He pulled
me along, too, over the sand. Oh, indeed, you must not be angry with
Jean."

"It was very deceptive of him not to tell me--or his father. Then we
could both have come with you--or explained to you that the tide rose
early to-day. We heard it was to come early when you were out last
night. They say," she went on, shaking her head, "if it had been an
equinoctial tide, that neither of you would have escaped--there would
have been no shadow of a hope for either--you would both have been
drowned out there in the damp, wet sand."

Mademoiselle Therese showing signs of weeping again, Barbara hastened
to comfort her, assuring her that she would never again go out alone to
see St. Michel from that side, which she thought was a perfectly safe
promise to make. But her companion shook her head mournfully,
declaring that it would be a very long time before she brought any of
her pupils to Mont St. Michel again.

"They might really get caught next time," she said, and Barbara knew it
was no good to point out that probably there would never be another
pupil who was quite so silly as she had been.

"Nevertheless," the girl said to herself, looking back at the grand,
gray pile from the train, "except for the fright I gave them, it was
worth it all--worth it all, dear St. Michel, to see you from out
there." And Jean, looking pensively out of the window, was thinking
that since it was safely over, the adventure was one which any youth
might be proud to tell to his companions, and which few were fortunate
or brave enough to have experienced.

CHAPTER IX.

MADEMOISELLE VIRE.

"The Loires' chief virtues are their friends," Barbara had written
home,