st as his went
nodding: with the effect that I grew dizzy and sick, and Mother Marie
thought I was going to die, and said the White Paternoster over me five
times.

I looked about me, I say, and felt my spirit waking with the waking of
the year. Yet, though I was glad to feel alive and young once more, I
never thought I was going to anything new or wonderful. The wise, kind
friend would be there; we should talk, and I should come away refreshed
and strengthened, in peace and courage; I thought of nothing more. But
when the widow Sparrow opened the door to me, I heard voices from the
room within; a strange voice of a man, and the priest's answering. I
stopped short on the threshold.

"The Father is busy!" I said. "I will call again, when he is alone."

"Now don't you!" said Mrs. Sparrow, who was always fond of me, and
thought it a terrible walk for me to take, so young, and with the
"growing weakness" not out of me. "Don't ye go a step, Jacques! I expect
you can come in just as well as not. There is a gentleman here, but he's
so pleasant, I should wish to have you see him, if _I_ was the Father."

I was hesitating, all the shyness of a country-bred boy coming over me;
for I had a quick ear, and this strange voice was not like the voices I
was used to hearing; it was like Father L'Homme-Dieu's, fine and
high-bred. But the next instant Father L'Homme-Dieu had stepped to the
door of the study, and saw me.

"Come in, Jacques!" he cried. His eyes were bright, and his air gay, as
I had never seen it. "Come in, my son! I have a friend here, and you are
the very person I want him to meet." I stepped over the threshold
awkwardly enough, and stood before the stranger. He was a young man, a
few years older than myself; tall and slender,--we might have been twins
as far as height and build went, but there the resemblance ceased. He
was fair, with such delicate colouring that he might have looked
womanish but for the dark fiery blue of his eyes, and his little curled
moustache. He looked the way you fancy a prince looking, Melody, when
Auntie Joy tells you a fairy story, though he was simply dressed enough.

"Marquis," said Father L'Homme-Dieu, with a shade of ceremony that I had
never heard before in his tone, "let me present to you M. Jacques
D'Arthenay, my friend! Jacques, this is the Marquis de Ste. Valerie."

He gave my name the French pronunciation. It was kindly meant; at my
present age, I think it was perhaps rightly d