ave her in a convent."

Mademoiselle Rosalie was very much offended; her sallow face flushed a
dull red, and the wings of her cap flapped as if she were about to take
flight, and leave me in my difficulties. She had kindliness of feeling,
but it was not proof against my poverty and my covert slight of her
religion. I caught her hand in mine to prevent her going.

"Let us come to your house for to-day," I entreated: "to-morrow we will
go. I have money enough to pay you."

I was only too glad to get a shelter for Minima and myself for another
night. She explained to me the French system of borrowing money upon
articles left in pledge and offered to accompany me to the _mont de
piete_ with those things that we could spare. But, upon packing up our
few possessions, I remembered that only a few days before Madame Perrier
had borrowed from me my seal-skin mantle, the only valuable thing I had
remaining. I had lent it reluctantly, and in spite of myself; and it had
never been returned. Minima's wardrobe was still poorer than my own. All
the money we could raise was less than two napoleons; and with this we
had to make our way to Granville, and thence to Guernsey. We could not
travel luxuriously.

The next morning we left Noireau on foot.

CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH.

LOST AT NIGHTFALL.

It was a soft spring morning, with an exhilarating, jubilant lightness
in the air, such as only comes in the very early spring, or at sunrise
on a dewy summer-day. A few gray clouds lay low along the horizon, but
overhead the sky was a deep, rich blue, with fine, filmy streaks of
white vapor floating slowly across it. The branches of the trees were
still bare, showing the blue through their delicate net-work; but the
ends of the twigs were thickening, and the leaf-buds swelling under the
rind. The shoots of the hazel-bushes wore a purple bloom, with yellow
catkins already hanging in tassels about them. The white buds of the
chestnut-trees shone with silvery lustre. In the orchards, though the
tangled boughs of the apple-trees were still thickly covered with gray
lichens, small specks of green among the gray gave a promise of early
blossom. Thrushes were singing from every thorn-bush; and the larks,
lost in the blue heights above us, flung down their triumphant carols,
careless whether our ears caught them or no. A long, straight road
stretched before us, and seemed to end upon the skyline in the far
distance. Below us, when we looked