e and happiness--no eye
to watch and no tongue to wound us."

"Never! never!" said Daphne.

She snatched her hands from those of her lover, retreated a few paces,
and began to cry. Hector went up to her; he spoke of his
affection--he besought her with tears in his eyes--he was so
eloquent and so sincere, that poor Daphne was unable to resist, for
any length of time, those bewildering shocks of first love to which
the wisest of us yield: she said, all pale and trembling--

"Well--yes--I trust myself to you--and heaven. I am not to blame--is
it my fault that I love you so?"

A tender embrace followed these words. Evening was now come; the sun,
sinking behind the clouds on the horizon, cast but a feeble light;
the little herdsman was driving home his oxen and his flock of
turkeys, whose gabbling disturbed the solemnity of the closing day.
The flock belonging to the castle turned naturally towards the
watering-place.

"Look at my poor sheep," said Daphne, throwing back the curls which
by some means had fallen over her forehead--"look at my poor sheep:
they are pointing out the road I ought to go."

"On the contrary," replied Hector, "the ungrateful wretches are going
off very contentedly without you."

"But I am terrified," rejoined Daphne: "how can I leave my mother in
this way? She will die of grief!"

"She will write a poem on it; and that will be all."

"I will write to her that I was unable to resist my inclination for
a monastic life, and that I have gone, without giving her notice, to
the nunnery of St. Marie that we were speaking of last night."

So said the pure and candid Bribri, hitting in a moment on the
ingenious device; so true it is, that at the bottom of all
hearts--even the most amiable--there is some small spark of mischief
ready to explode when we least expect it.

"Yes--dearest," cried Hector, delighted at the thought, "you will
write to her you have gone into the convent; she will go on to
Avignon; we shall remain together beneath these cloudless skies, in
this lovely country, happy as the birds, and free as the winds of
the hill!"

Daphne thought she heard some brilliant quotation from her mother,
and perhaps was, on that account, the more easily led by Hector.
After walking half an hour, with many a glance by the way, and many
a smile, they arrived in front of the Cottage of the Vines--the good
old woman was hoeing peas in her garden--she had left her house to
the protection of an old