mble, who did not turn twice to look at her as she
passed through the Vier Marchi, so noble was her carriage, so graceful
and buoyant her walk, so lacking in self-consciousness her beauty. More
than one young gentleman of family had been known to ride through the
Place du Vier Prison, hoping to get sight of her, and to offer the view
of a suggestively empty pillion behind him.

She had, however, never listened to flatterers, and only one youth of
Jersey had footing in the cottage. This was Ranulph Delagarde, who had
gone in and out at his will, but that was casually and not too often,
and he was discreet and spoke no word of love. Sometimes she talked to
him of things concerning the daily life with which she did not care to
trouble Sieur de Mauprat. In ways quite unknown to her he had made her
life easier for her. She knew that her mother had thought of Ranulph for
her husband, although she blushed whenever--but it was not often--the
idea came to her. She remembered how her mother had said that Ranulph
would be a great man in the island some day; that he had a mind above
all the youths in St. Heliers; that she would rather see Ranulph
a master ship-builder than a babbling ecrivain in the Rue des Tres
Pigeons, a smirking leech, or a penniless seigneur with neither trade
nor talent. Guida was attracted to Ranulph through his occupation, for
she loved strength, she loved all clean and wholesome trades; that
of the mason, of the carpenter, of the blacksmith, and most of the
ship-builder. Her father, whom she did not remember, had been a
ship-builder, and she knew that he had been a notable man; every one had
told her that.

.........................

"She has met her destiny," say the village gossips, when some man in the
dusty procession of life sees a woman's face in the pleasant shadow of a
home, and drops out of the ranks to enter at her doorway.

Was Ranulph to be Guida's destiny?

Handsome and stalwart though he looked as he entered the cottage in the
Place du Vier Prison, on that September morning after the rescue of the
chevalier, his tool-basket on his shoulder, and his brown face enlivened
by one simple sentiment, she was far from sure that he was--far from
sure.

CHAPTER VII

The little hall-way into which Ranulph stepped from the street led
through to the kitchen. Guida stood holding back the door for him to
enter this real living-room of the house, which opened directly upon
the garden beh