grandmother, Juliane de Cornault, lying in the
chapel with her feet on a little dog," he said.

The analogy sent a chill through her, but she laughed and answered:
"Well, when I am dead you must put me beside her, carved in marble, with
my dog at my feet."

"Oho--we'll wait and see," he said, laughing also, but with his black
brows close together. "The dog is the emblem of fidelity."

"And do you doubt my right to lie with mine at my feet?"

"When I'm in doubt I find out," he answered. "I am an old man," he
added, "and people say I make you lead a lonely life. But I swear you
shall have your monument if you earn it."

"And I swear to be faithful," she returned, "if only for the sake of
having my little dog at my feet."

Not long afterward he went on business to the Quimper Assizes; and while
he was away his aunt, the widow of a great nobleman of the duchy, came
to spend a night at Kerfol on her way to the pardon of Ste. Barbe. She
was a woman of great piety and consequence, and much respected by Yves
de Cornault, and when she proposed to Anne to go with her to Ste. Barbe
no one could object, and even the chaplain declared himself in favour of
the pilgrimage. So Anne set out for Ste. Barbe, and there for the first
time she talked with Herve de Lanrivain. He had come once or twice to
Kerfol with his father, but she had never before exchanged a dozen words
with him. They did not talk for more than five minutes now: it was under
the chestnuts, as the procession was coming out of the chapel. He said:
"I pity you," and she was surprised, for she had not supposed that any
one thought her an object of pity. He added: "Call for me when you need
me," and she smiled a little, but was glad afterward, and thought often
of the meeting.

She confessed to having seen him three times afterward: not more. How
or where she would not say--one had the impression that she feared to
implicate some one. Their meetings had been rare and brief; and at the
last he had told her that he was starting the next day for a foreign
country, on a mission which was not without peril and might keep him for
many months absent. He asked her for a remembrance, and she had none
to give him but the collar about the little dog's neck. She was sorry
afterward that she had given it, but he was so unhappy at going that she
had not had the courage to refuse.

Her husband was away at the time. When he returned a few days later
he picked up the little dog to p