fined shadow
upon our path, from the poplar-trees standing in long, straight rows in
the hedges. If I found Olivia at the end of that starlit path my
gladness in it would be completed. Yet if I found her, what then? I
should see her for a few minutes in the dull _salon_ of a school perhaps
with some watchful, spying Frenchwoman present. I should simply satisfy
myself that she was living. There could be nothing more between us. I
dare not tell her how dear she was to me, or ask her if she ever thought
of me in her loneliness and friendlessness. I began to wish that I had
brought Johanna with me, who could have taken her in her arms, and
kissed and comforted her. Why had I not thought of that before?

As we proceeded at our delusive pace along the last stage of our
journey, I began to sound the driver, cautiously wheeling about the
object of my excursion into those remote regions. I had tramped through
Normandy and Brittany three or four times, but there had been no
inducement to visit Noireau, which resembled a Lancashire cotton-town,
and I had never been there.

"There are not many English at Noireau?" I remarked, suggestively.

"Not one," he replied--"not one at this moment. There was one little
English mam'zelle--peste!--a very pretty little English girl, who was
voyaging precisely like you, m'sieur, some months ago. There was a
little child with her, and the two were quite alone. They are very
intrepid, are the English mam'zelles. She did not know a word of our
language. But that was droll, m'sieur! A French demoiselle would never
voyage like that."

The little child puzzled me. Yet I could not help fancying that this
young Englishwoman travelling alone, with no knowledge of French, must
be my Olivia. At any rate it could be no other than Miss Ellen
Martineau.

"Where was she going to?" I asked.

"She came to Noireau to be an instructress in an establishment,"
answered the driver, in a tone of great enjoyment--"an establishment
founded by the wife of Monsieur Emile Perrier, the avocat! He! he! he!
Mon Dieu! how droll that was, m'sieur! An avocat! So they believed that
in England? Bah! Emile Perrier an avocat--mon Dieu!"

"But what is there to laugh at?" I asked, as the man's laughter rang
through the quiet night.

"Am I an avocat?" he inquired derisively, "am I a proprietor? am I even
a cure? Pardon, m'sieur, but I am just as much avocat, proprietor, cure,
as Emile Perrier. He was an impostor. He became ban