Monique.

The cottage of his sister was small, containing only three apartments and
an outer kitchen, and the furniture was of the simplest kind. As the
family were numerous, the kitchen was used as a sleeping apartment, the
head of the bed being made in a kind of cupboard, into which in the
daytime the bedding was turned up, and the cupboard doors closed. A few
chairs, a table, and a glass case, in which was a coarse waxen figure,
flauntingly dressed, representing the Virgin with her child in her arms,
completed the rest of the moveables of the sitting room.

D'Elsac fastened his horse to a post, which opportunely stood near, and
walked into the cottage. No sound reached his ear, though around him lay
many articles, denoting that the family had not long been absent. He was
in the kitchen, but his step aroused no one to see who was the intruder,
and he again walked back to the door, but still there was no appearance
of any one near.

He looked down the village street, to see if any one was approaching, but
the village also appeared deserted, and he was beginning to get a little
uneasy, when he was roused by the playful voice of a child as it were
behind him. He turned in the direction of the voice, and saw that two
young girls were standing in the very middle of the apartment, having
come from some inner room.

They did not appear to notice D'Elsac, as he was without the cottage
door, and, as he listened unnoticed by them, he was aware that they were
too much interested with their own conversation to regard his presence.

He could not doubt for an instant but that these two fair girls before
him were his nieces, and the younger, a mere playful child, was no doubt
the little Mime or Mimi, as she was endearingly called, for the rare
talent she evinced in mimicking or laughing at the eccentricities of her
neighbours.

Mimi was a very lovely little girl in outward appearance, her hair and
eyes being of a most brilliant black, and she wore the dress of the
peasants of Normandy, a province which borders close on Picardy. D'Elsac
could not so easily distinguish her companion, though she was evidently
an elder sister, and she, too, wore the Norman costume. This dress
consisted of a full red striped petticoat, a jacket with short sleeves,
and an apron with pockets.

He saw, however, that she was not behind her younger sister in beauty,
and though speaking with earnestness to the child, when Dorsain first
beheld h