the
church. Apple-trees, heavy with red fruit, bent over the way, as safe on
that village road as in any fenced orchard.

"I do not want to send him into the army," Urbain said, and he looked at
her tenderly.

He had long doubted whether, to please her, he was not spoiling and
wasting the boy's life. He was sometimes angry with himself for his
weakness; then again philosophy came to his aid: he laughed and shrugged
his shoulders. It had always been so: on one side the bringing up of his
son according to his own mind; and on the other, domestic peace. For his
little Anne, with all her religion, perhaps because of it, was anything
but meek as a wife and mother. It was fortunate for all parties, he now
thought, that the present slight anxiety found her and himself on the
same side, though for different reasons.

"Helene is an astonishingly pretty girl," he said, "and the sooner she
is married the better. Young men will be foolish."

"More than pretty--beautiful, I think. A little lifeless--I don't know
that I should fall in love with her. Yes--but a good marriage, poor
girl. Not to that monster! Adelaide amazes me."

Urbain's ugly face curled up in a rather sardonic smile. He took his
wife's hand and kissed it.

"My little lady, Adelaide is to be admired. You are to be adored. Go and
say your prayers for us all."

He disappeared into the morning mist, which just then moved and swept
away under a light wind, opening to view all the opposite slope and the
gorgeous, sun-bathed front of Lancilly.

"Ah, mon Dieu!" murmured Anne. "To lose both of them to Lancilly--come,
it is too much. You shall not have Ange, you horrible old walls--no!"

By this time Urbain had disappeared round the corner of the church, and
was hurrying down the hill. She slipped in at her own little door, to
her place near the altar, so lately left. All was silent now, the Cure
was gone; she knelt there alone and prayed for them all, as Urbain had
said. His words were mockery, she knew; but that only made her prayers
more earnest.

The misty autumn morning grew into a cloudless day. Urbain came home to
breakfast between ten and eleven, but Angelot did not appear. Urbain was
grave and full of business. A short talk with Herve, who was going out
shooting, a much longer and more interesting talk with Adelaide, had the
consequence of sending him off that very day to the town of
Sonnay-le-Loir, the Prefect's residence and General Ratoneau's
headquart