here were unshed tears in her eyes, and I grimly realised
the futility of human effort. All my plans had been frustrated by a
passing rain.

At home, however, I found all comfortable enough, and fires alight in
the hall and principal rooms.

It was late in the day that I came upon Lucille alone in the
drawing-room. She was looking out of the window across the bleak
table-land to the sea.

"I am sorry, Mademoiselle," I said, suddenly conscious of the stiff
bareness of my ancestral home, "that things are not brighter. I have
done my best."

"Thank you," she said, and there was still resentment in her voice.
"You have been very kind."

She stood for a few moments in silence, and then turning flashed an
angry glance at me.

"I do not know who constituted you our protector," she said
scornfully.

"Fate, Mademoiselle."

Chapter XVI

Exile

"Il y a donc des malheurs tellement bien caches que ceux qui
en sont la cause, ne les devinent meme pas."

The first to show kindness to the ladies exiled at Hopton was Isabella
Gayerson, who, in response to a letter from the rightful owner of the
old manor house, called on Madame de Clericy. Isabella's pale face,
her thin-lipped, determined mouth and reserved glance seem to have
made no very favourable impression on Madame, who indeed wrote of her
as a disappointed woman, nursing some sorrow or grievance in her
heart.

With Lucille, however, Isabella speedily inaugurated a friendship, to
which Lucille's knowledge of English no doubt contributed largely, for
Isabella knew but little French.

"Lucille," wrote Madame to me, for I had returned to London in order
to organise a more active pursuit of Charles Miste, "Lucille admires
your friend Miss Gayerson immensely, and says that the English
_demoiselles_ suggest to her a fine and delicate porcelain--but it
seems to me," Madame added, "that the grain is a hard one."

So rapid was the progress of this friendship that the two girls often
met either at Hopton or at Little Corton, two miles away, where
Isabella, now left an orphan, lived with an elderly aunt for her
companion.

Girls, it would appear, possess a thousand topics of common interest,
a hundred small matters of mutual confidence, which conduce to a
greater intimacy than men and boys ever achieve. In a few weeks
Lucille and Isabella were at Christian names, and sworn allies, though
any knowing aught of them would have inclined to the suspicion th