e
watched the girl's radiant face it seemed to the Norman that the Mass
had helped even more than she had ventured to hope. "She is going to try
to fight it down," she thought gratefully, "and that is all that is
necessary."

M. Bourbon, charcutier, in Rupert Street, has a beautiful shop full of
wonderful things. Felicite bought a pound of galantine de volaille
truffee, for which she paid two-and-six, and for which in Piccadilly she
would have paid five shillings; she bought half a pound of jellied eel;
she bought Pont l'Eveque cheese; flat little Parisian sausages; she
bought a glass jar of preserved pears, brown with cinnamon.

Then they made their way to the Ile de Java, where they acquired a large
tin of coffee, on to the Boucherie Francaise, where Felicite had a long
discussion with M. Perigot _lui-meme_, whom she insisted on seeing, to
the disgust of the young man in attendance, who wished to look at
Brigit, and whom fate assigned to an ancient dame from Brewer Street.

There were other errands to be done, but at last they reached home, and
in the passage Felicite paused and set down the basket.

"You will find my husband in his study," she said, looking earnestly at
Brigit. "Go to him, my dear, and be happy. Remember, he is nearly an old
man, and loves you like his daughter. And remember, also, that because
it is not fitting in any way, your love for him will change sooner or
later, and become that of a daughter for her father. So don't worry."

Brigit stood looking after her for a moment, and then went slowly
upstairs. Joyselle, in the crimson-velvet garment, was writing a letter
as she entered; he looked ill and miserably unhappy.

"Victor," she began without preamble, laying her arm across his
shoulders and pressing her cheek to his hair. "Will you forgive me? I--I
love you."

Then she broke down and cried in an old-fashioned and weakly feminine
way that she could not combat, although she quite realised its absolute
inappropriateness to her character.

"How could you?" he whispered, holding her close with the greatest
tenderness, the torturing formula of yesterday coming to his lips. "How
could you?"

His eyes, too, were wet, but her breakdown had given him his strength
back. "I thought you did not care."

"Not care!"

"But you said so," he persisted, manlike.

"Victor--you don't know how much I love you, and I don't know how I can
be such a brute as I am. But--it hurts me the worst. It--it kill