ee, though I vex the world's watchdogs.--So,
Danvers, you are noticing how thoroughly Frenchwomen do their work.'

Danvers replied with a slight mincing: 'They may, ma'am; but they chatter
chatter so.'

'The result proves that it is not a waste of energy. They manage their
fowls too.'

'They've no such thing as mutton, ma'am.'

Dacier patriotically laughed.

'She strikes the apology for wealthy and leisurely landlords,' Diana
said.

Danvers remarked that the poor fed meagrely in France. She was not
convinced of its being good for them by hearing that they could work on
it sixteen hours out of the four and twenty.

Mr. Percy Dacier's repast was furnished to him half an hour later. At
sunset Diana, taking Danvers beside her, walked with him to the line of
the country road bearing on Caen. The wind had sunk. A large brown disk
paused rayless on the western hills.

'A Dacier ought to feel at home in Normandy; and you may have sprung from
this neighbourhood,' said she, simply to chat. 'Here the land is poorish,
and a mile inland rich enough to bear repeated crops of colza, which
tries the soil, I hear. As for beauty, those blue hills you see, enfold
charming valleys. I meditate an expedition to Harcourt before I return.
An English professor of his native tongue at the Lycee at Caen told me on
my way here that for twenty shillings a week you may live in royal ease
round about Harcourt. So we have our bed and board in prospect if fortune
fails us, Danvers!

'I would rather die in England, ma'am,' was the maid's reply.

Dacier set foot on his carriage-step. He drew a long breath to say a
short farewell, and he and Diana parted.

They parted as the plainest of sincere good friends, each at heart
respecting the other for the repression of that which their hearts
craved; any word of which might have carried them headlong, bound
together on a Mazeppa-race, with scandal for the hounding wolves, and
social ruin for the rocks and torrents.

Dacier was the thankfuller, the most admiring of the two; at the same
time the least satisfied. He saw the abyss she had aided him in escaping;
and it was refreshful to look abroad after his desperate impulse.
Prominent as he stood before the world, he could not think without a
shudder of behaving like a young frenetic of the passion. Those whose aim
is at the leadership of the English people know, that however truly based
the charges of hypocrisy, soundness of moral fibre runs throu