f ornaments.

For an hour, during which she skilfully finished the little roses, the
silence had not been broken even by a single word. But her thread broke
again, and she re-threaded her needle by feeling carefully under the
frame, as only an adroit person can do. Then, as she raised her head,
she again inhaled with satisfaction the pure, fresh air that came in
from the garden.

"Ah!" she said softly, "how beautiful it was yesterday! The sunshine is
always perfect."

Hubertine shook her head as she stopped to wax her thread.

"As for me, I am so wearied, it seems as if I had no arms, and it tires
me to work. But that is not strange, for I so seldom go out, and am no
longer young and strong, as you are at sixteen."

Angelique had reseated herself and resumed her work. She prepared the
lilies by sewing bits of vellum on certain places that had been marked,
so as to give them relief, but the flowers themselves were not to be
made until later, for fear the gold be tarnished were the hands moved
much over it.

Hubert, who, having finished arranging the material in its frame,
was about drawing with pumice the pattern of the cope, joined in the
conversation and said: "These first warm days of spring are sure to give
me a terrible headache."

Angelique's eyes seemed to be vaguely lost in the rays which now fell
upon one of the flying buttresses of the church, as she dreamily added:
"Oh no, father, I do not think so. One day in the lively air, like
yesterday, does me a world of good."

Having finished the little golden leaves, she began one of the large
roses, near the lilies. Already she had threaded several needles with
the silks required, and she embroidered in stitches varying in length,
according to the natural position and movement of the petals, and
notwithstanding the extreme delicacy and absorbing nature of this work,
the recollections of the previous day, which she lived over again in
thought and in silence, now came to her lips, and crowded so closely
upon each other that she no longer tried to keep them back. So she
talked of their setting out upon their expedition, of the beautiful
fields they crossed, of their lunch over there in the ruins of
Hautecoeur, upon the flagstones of a little room whose tumble-down walls
towered far above the Ligneul, which rolled gently among the willows
fifty yards below them.

She was enthusiastic over these crumbling ruins, and the scattered
blocks of stone among the bram