he going to say? Was the
post-office to be taken from them? She came straight to the point.

"What have I done wrong, Monsieur? I've never kept the mail-stage
waiting; I've never left the mailbag unlocked; I've never been late
in opening the wicket; I've never been careless, and no one's ever
complained of a lost letter."

The Seigneur saw her agitation, and was sorry for her. He came to the
point as she had done:

"We will have you made postmistress--you alone, Rosalie Evanturel. I've
made up my mind to that. But you'll promise not to get married--eh?
Anyhow, there's no one in the parish for you to marry. You're too
well-born and you've been too well educated for a habitant's wife--and
the Cure or I can't marry you."

He was not taken back to see her flush deeply, and it pleased him to see
this much life rising to his own touch, this much revelation to give his
mind a new interest. He had come to that age when the mind is surprised
to find that the things that once charmed charm less, and the things
once hated are less acutely repulsive. He saw her embarrassment. He
did not know that this was the first time that she had ever thought of
marriage since it ceased to be a dream of girlhood, and, by reason of
thinking much on a man, had become a possibility, which, however, she
had never confessed to herself. Here she was faced by it now in the
broad open day: a plain, hard statement, unrelieved by aught save the
humour of the shrewd eyes bent upon her.

She did not answer him at once. "Do you promise not to marry so useless
a thing as man, and to remain true to the government?" he continued.

"If I wished to marry a man, I should not let the government stand in my
way," she said, in brave confusion.

"But do you wish to marry any man?" he asked abruptly, even petulantly.

"I have not asked myself that question, Monsieur, and--should you ask
it, unless--" she said, and paused with as pretty and whimsical a glance
of merriment as could well be.

He burst out laughing at the swift turn she had given her reply, and at
the double suggestion. Then he suddenly changed. A curious expression
filled his eyes. A smile, almost beautiful, came to his lips.

"'Pon my honour," he said, in a low tone, "you have me caught! And I beg
to say--I beg to say," he added, with a flush mounting in his own face,
a sudden inspiration in his look, "that if you do not think me too old
and crabbed and ugly, and can endure me, I shall be prof