lle's black eyes close till they look like lines: Marie does
not see her face, but Nicolas Marais shivers, he hardly knows why.

A restraint has come over the merry trio, and Nicolas abhors restraint.
"Tiens!" he says carelessly, "there is a fresh bevy of basket-women,
Mam'selle Lesage."

Elise darts off like a greyhound, and Marie forgets her vexation and
laughs out merrily at Nicolas's ruse: "She is such a busybody!" The girl
glances across to see what has become of Leon: he is talking to
Mademoiselle Lesage.

Alphonse Poiseau has kept silence, but he has observed. "I should not
like to offend mam'selle," he says, "her eyes are so like a snake's."

II.

Market has come and gone again. Marie Famette was not happy as she went
home last Saturday, but to-day her heart aches sorely as she goes along
the dusty road to St. Gertrude. Last Saturday was the first market-day
this year that Leon Roussel has not helped her into her cart and taken a
friendly leave of her; but he disappeared before market was over, and
to-day he was not there at all.

"And he might have walked home with me!" Tears are in poor little
Marie's eyes. Leon Roussel has seemed her own special property, and he
has not been to her mother's house for a fortnight. "And if he had been
at market to-day, he would have been content with me: poor Nicolas must
be ill indeed to stay away from market. Ma foi! I have been dull alone.
Elise Lesage was civil, for a wonder: I hope she will give old Marais's
note safely to his nephew. I wonder why she goes to see Nicolas?"

As she says the word a strange foreboding seizes Marie: she cannot tell
what causes it, but her old dislike to Elise rises up, mingled with a
kind of fear. "I ought to have given Nicolas the note myself; and yet--"

The road is very long and very dusty to-day: it is never an interesting
way out of Aubette, except that being cut on the hillside it is raised
high, the little river meandering through the osier meadows on the left,
and also commands a fine view of the beautiful old church. But Marie
does not turn back to look at the church: her heart is too heavy to take
interest in anything out of herself. She has left the cart behind to
bring out crockery and some new chairs which she has purchased for her
mother, and she wishes she had stayed in Aubette till her cargo was
packed. All at once a new thought comes, and her eyes brighten. A wood
clothes the hilly side of the road, but on the left t