nicating with the great lower room of the
ground floor, on which was situated the door of the house, near which
the various staircases met.

His room was furnished with his hammock, his chronometer, and his pipe:
there were also a table and a chair. The ceiling had been whitewashed,
as well as the four walls. A fine marine map, bearing the inscription
_W. Faden_, 5 Charing Cross, Geographer to His Majesty, and representing
the Channel Islands, was nailed up at the side of the door, and on the
left, stretched out and fastened with other nails, appeared one of those
large cotton handkerchiefs on which are printed, in colours, the signals
of all countries in the world, having at the four corners the standards
of France, Russia, Spain, and the United States, and in the centre the
union-jack of England.

Douce and Grace were two faithful creatures within certain limits. Douce
was good-natured enough, and Grace was probably good-looking. Douce was
unmarried, and had secretly "a gallant." In the Channel Islands the word
is common, as indeed is the fact itself. The two girl's regarded as
servants had something of the Creole in their character, a sort of
slowness in their movements, not out of keeping with the Norman spirit
pervading the relations of servant and master in the Channel Islands.
Grace, coquettish and good-looking, was always scanning the future with
a nervous anxiety. This arose from the fact of her not only having, like
Douce, "a gallant," but also, as the scandal-loving averred, a sailor
husband, whose return one day was a thing she dreaded. This, however,
does not concern us. In a household less austere and less innocent,
Douce would have continued to be the servant, but Grace would have
become the _soubrette_. The dangerous talents of Grace were lost upon a
young mistress so pure and good as Deruchette. For the rest, the
intrigues of Douce and Grace were cautiously concealed. Mess Lethierry
knew nothing of such matters, and no token of them had ever reached
Deruchette.

The lower room of the ground floor, a hall with a large fireplace and
surrounded with benches and tables, had served in the last century as a
meeting-place for a conventicle of French Protestant refugees. The sole
ornament of the bare stone wall was a sheet of parchment, set in a frame
of black wood, on which were represented some of the charitable deeds of
the great Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux. Some poor diocesans of this famous
orator, surname