its,
appeared to be perfectly used to the _role_ that he assigned her, and
sat, usually silent, a kindly spectator of whatever might be going on.

This was the first time that Brigit had realised that she had a real
personality, and the girl wondered at her own blindness, for every line
in Madame Joyselle's face meant, she now saw, an individuality stronger
rather than weaker than the average woman's, even in these days of
clamorous individualism.

"Do tell me about him--when he was young," Lady Brigit Mead continued,
her thick-looking white eyelids, eyelids that the hapless Mr. Babington
compared in his twenty-second sonnet to magnolia-petals, drooping till
her lashes made shadows on her cheeks.

And Felicite Joyselle told her story.

"He lived at St. Pol--a mile from Falaise on the way to Caen. His father
was gamekeeper to M. de Cerisay. My father, Jacques Rion,--there is his
picture to the right, with the beard,--was a tanner in Falaise. We were
all poor, but it was very pleasant. Falaise is a beautiful city.
Sometimes I used to think there was nothing so beautiful in London as
the Place St. Gervais on a market-day in summer, with the fountain
playing, and all the friendly people selling their wares. But that," she
added simply, "was before I had seen the Albert Memorial. Victor's
mother used to sell her fruit in the town, and her sister had married my
uncle, anyway! and Victor used to come with her. The first time I
remember seeing him, however, was at Mass. It was winter, and very cold,
and he kept blowing his hands to warm them. I was twelve, and he about
ten. He was a beautiful little boy. Then one day his father brought him
to see his aunt--who had married Monsieur Chalumeau, my uncle, you
see?--and I was there. And we went up to the castle. You have been
there? It is where the Conqueror--who conquered England--was born, in a
tiny little stone room high above the tower. You know the story of
Arlette?" Brigit nodded, but she did not know. She wanted to hear about
Joyselle.

"_Bon._ And then, when I was twenty, and he eighteen, he came back from
Rouen where, did I tell you?--M. de Cerisay had sent him to learn to
play the violin--and he told me he wanted me to marry him. He was very
splendid then, with city clothes, and oil on his hair, and his hands
smooth as a gentleman's.

"We were married at St. Gervais. Then he went back to Rouen and he
studied again. That," she added, "was the worst time of my life."