y unkind. If she
asked him to come, could he have said no? Is that the way for a
gentleman to treat a lady?"

Riette had posed him, and she knew it. But she did not reap any personal
advantage.

"As to that," he said, "the whole thing was your fault. I did not send
you to Lancilly to carry messages, but to learn your lessons. What did
it matter to you if your cousin Helene was unhappy? In this world we
must all be unhappy sometimes, as you will find. Go to bed at once.
Consider yourself in disgrace. You will stay in your room for two days
on bread and water, and you will not go to Lancilly again for a long
time, perhaps never. I am sorry I ever sent you there, but in future
Mademoiselle Helene's affairs will be arranged without you."

Riette went obediently away, shaking her head. As she went upstairs she
heard her father calling to Marie Gigot, giving severe commands in a
nervous voice, and she smiled faintly through her tears.

"Nevertheless, little papa, we love our Ange, you and I!" she said.

Angelot wandered about solitary with his gun and Nego, avoiding the
Lancilly side of the country, and keeping to his father's and his
uncle's land, where game abounded. For the present his good spirits were
effectually crushed; and yet, even now, his native hopefulness rose and
comforted him. It was true every one was angry; it was true he had given
his word of honour not to attempt to see Helene, and at any moment her
future might be decided without him; but on the other hand, her father
had promised that she should not marry Ratoneau; and he and she, they
were both young, they loved each other; somehow, some day, the future
could hardly fail to be theirs.

In the meantime, Angelot was better off among his woods and moorlands
than Helene in her locked room, all the old labyrinths and secret ways
discovered and stopped. The vintage was very near, for the last days of
September had come. Again a young moon was rising over the country, for
the moon which lighted Helene to La Mariniere on her first evening in
Anjou had waned and gone. And the heather had faded, the woods and
copses began to be tinted with bronze, to droop after the long, hot
season, only broken by two or three thunderstorms. The evenings were
drawing in, the mornings began to be chilly; autumn, even lovelier than
summer in that climate which has the seasons of the poets, was giving a
new freshness to the air and a new colour to the landscape.

One day tow