gs, I verily believe; yet not me, Lucy!"

"I know that you have a pleasant old house in a pleasant old square of
the Basse-Ville--why don't you go and live there?"

"Hein?" muttered he again.

"I liked it much, Monsieur; with the steps ascending to the door, the
grey flags in front, the nodding trees behind--real trees, not
shrubs--trees dark, high, and of old growth. And the
boudoir-oratoire--you should make that room your study; it is so quiet
and solemn."

He eyed me closely; he half-smiled, half-coloured. "Where did you pick
up all that? Who told you?" he asked.

"Nobody told me. Did I dream it, Monsieur, do you think?"

"Can I enter into your visions? Can I guess a woman's waking thoughts,
much less her sleeping fantasies?"

"If I dreamt it, I saw in my dream human beings as well as a house. I
saw a priest, old, bent, and grey, and a domestic--old, too, and
picturesque; and a lady, splendid but strange; her head would scarce
reach to my elbow--her magnificence might ransom a duke. She wore a
gown bright as lapis-lazuli--a shawl worth a thousand francs: she was
decked with ornaments so brilliant, I never saw any with such a
beautiful sparkle; but her figure looked as if it had been broken in
two and bent double; she seemed also to have outlived the common years
of humanity, and to have attained those which are only labour and
sorrow. She was become morose--almost malevolent; yet _somebody_, it
appears, cared for her in her infirmities--somebody forgave her
trespasses, hoping to have his trespasses forgiven. They lived
together, these three people--the mistress, the chaplain, the
servant--all old, all feeble, all sheltered under one kind wing."

He covered with his hand the upper part of his face, but did not
conceal his mouth, where I saw hovering an expression I liked.

"I see you have entered into my secrets," said he, "but how was it
done?"

So I told him how--the commission on which I had been sent, the storm
which had detained me, the abruptness of the lady, the kindness of the
priest.

"As I sat waiting for the rain to cease, Pere Silas whiled away the
time with a story," I said.

"A story! What story? Pere Silas is no romancist."

"Shall I tell Monsieur the tale?"

"Yes: begin at the beginning. Let me hear some of Miss Lucy's
French--her best or her worst--I don't much care which: let us have a
good poignee of barbarisms, and a bounteous dose of the insular accent."

"Monsieur is not going