to heart. If he would only go to the court of some
foreign prince, and there gain renown, no one would reproach him with
what he could not help; and he might win wealth, and land, and fame,
and be a fit wooer for any count's daughter. But even though he be a
dreamer, and does not understand his own advantage, he is not so
foolish as to turn his thoughts towards me, for well he knows my father
would never give me to him. Nay I rather think that he hates me as
being my father's daughter--above him in position--though I for my part
would always behave to him as in our childish days, and do everything
in my power to renew the old intimacy."

"Hm," said Aigleta, as she unlaced her bodice, "it may be that you are
right, and yet I wish he hated _me_ in the way he hates _thee_. I
should desire nothing better, but I am a servant's daughter. Who would
give himself the trouble to look and see whether I deserve love or
hate? And yet I think," and so saying she shook her thick hair over her
white shoulders, "it might be well worth their while too, and whether
high-born or not, you shall see, _Domna Comtessa_, in the net of these
black hairs. I shall catch gay-plumaged birds as well as you with your
gold threads, and even if that black crow Jaufret keeps out of them--"

"Any one who heard you speak," interposed Garcinde, "would think that
you came from some quite other place than a convent. But now we will go
to sleep. I wish morning were come and that I had embraced my father."

They lay quiet for an hour, yet neither of them closed an eye; the bed
at the farm was certainly harder than their Mont Salvair couch, but
that alone would not have troubled the repose of girls of eighteen.
They both held their breath, and kept motionless, till Aigleta suddenly
sat up and said, "I never believed the nuns when they said the outer
world would steal away our rest; and now see, we have hardly put our
foot outside their gates, and already sleep flies from us. And yet we
are not even in love, I at least am not. Oh, Blessed Lady of Mont
Salvair, what _will_ happen when it comes to that! You of course will
have some distinguished husband, and then lovers as many as you will,
but I--suppose one took my fancy whom I could not have--I believe I
should set a wood on fire and jump into the midst of it!"

"What are you dreaming about?" answered Garcinde, without raising her
head from the pillow. "Do you suppose that I would take a husband whom
I did no