has a fine sense of all which is proper and becoming, else would she not
so dislike the ways of an inn, and have such fear of the men that gaze
on her there."

So touching is the blindness of those blinded by love! It is enough to
make one weep sometimes to see it,--to see, as in this instance of
Willan Blaycke, an upright, modest, and honest gentleman creating out of
the very virtues of his own nature the being whom he will worship, and
then clothing this ideal with a bit of common clay, of immodest and
ill-behaved flesh, which he hath found ready-made to his hand, and full
of the snare of good looks.

When Willan Blaycke rode away this time from the Golden Pear, he was, as
we say, in a mood ready to do some desperate thing, he was so vexed and
disappointed. What he did do, proved it; he turned his horse and rode
straight for Gaspard's mill. The artful Benoit had innocently dropped
the remark, as he was holding the stirrup for Willan to mount, that
Mistress Jeanne and her niece were at Pierre Gaspard's; that for his
part he wished them back,--there was no luck about a house without a
woman in it.

Willan Blaycke made some indifferent reply, as if all that were nothing
to him, and galloped off. But before he had gone five miles Benoit's
leaven worked, and he turned into a short-cut lane he knew which led to
the mill. He did not stop to ask himself what he should do there; he
simply galloped on towards Victorine. It was only a couple of leagues to
the mill, and its old tower and wheel were in sight before he thought of
its being near. Then he began to consider what errand he could make;
none occurred to him. He reined his horse up to a slow walk, and fell
into a reverie,--so deep a one that he did not see what he might have
seen had he looked attentively into a copse of poplars on a high bank
close to his road,--two young girls sitting on the ground peeling
slender willow stems for baskets. It was Annette Gaspard and Victorine;
and at the sound of a horse's feet they both leaned forward and looked
down into the road.

"Oh, see, Victorine!" Annette cried; "a brave rider goes there. Who can
he be? I wonder if he goes to the mill? Perhaps my father will keep him
to dinner."

At the first glance Victorine recognized Willan Blaycke, but she gave no
sign to her friend that she knew him.

"He sitteth his horse like one asleep," she said, "or in a dream. I call
him not a brave rider. He hath forgotten something," she ad