ourn him so bitterly.'

'If you knew--' cried Philip, growing indignant. 'For weeks he lay in
deadly lethargy, and when, with his left hand, he wrote and sent Osbert
to you, your kinsfolk threw the poor fellow into a dungeon, and put us
off with lies that you were married to your cousin. All believed, only
he--sick, helpless, speechless, as he was--he trusted you still; and
so soon as Mericour came, though he could scarcely brook the saddle,
nothing would hold him from seeking you. We saw only ruin at La
Sablerie, and well-nigh ever since have we been clapped up in prison by
your uncle. We were on the way to Quinet to seek you. He has kept his
faith whole through wounds and pain and prison and threats,--ay, and
sore temptation,' cried Philip, waxing eloquent; 'and, oh, it cannot be
that you do not care for him!'

'Doubt not my faith, sir,' said Eustacie, proudly; 'I have been as true
to him as if I had known he lived. Nor do I know who you are to question
me.'

At this moment the child pressed forward, holding between her tow
careful plump hands a red earthenware bowl, with the tisane steaming in
it, and the yellow petals strewn over the surface. She and Philip had
taken a great fancy to each other, and while her mother was busy
with the other patients, she had been left to her quiet play with her
fragments of glass, which she carried one by one to display, held up
to the light, to her new friends; who, in his weak state, and after
his long captivity, found her the more charming playmate because she so
strangely reminded him of his own little sisters. She thought herself
his little nurse, and missing from his broth the yellow petals that she
had been wont to think the charm of tisane, the housewifely little being
had trotted off, unseen and unmissed, across the quadrangle, over
the embankment, where she had often gathered them, or attended on the
'_lessive_' on the river's brink; and now she broke forth exultingly,
'Here, here is the tisane, with all the _soucis_. Let me feed you with
them, sir.'

'Ah! thou sweet one,' gasped Philip, 'I could as soon eat them as David
could drink the water! For these--for these---!' and the tears rushed
into his eyes. 'Oh! let me but kiss her, Madame; I loved her from the
first moment. She has the very face of my little sweeting, (what French
word is good enough for her?) didst run into peril for me, not knowing
how near I was to thee? What, must I eat it? Love me then.'

But the