e whitewashed cottage with a small leaded casement window on
each side of the front door. Unlike Hope Cottage, it did not look at all
the residence of Miss Janet and Miss Anne. Its appearance, indeed, was
woe-begone. Aristide, however, went up to the door; as there was neither
knocker nor bell, he rapped with his knuckles. The door opened, and
there, poorly dressed in blouse and skirt, stood Miss Anne.

She regarded him for a moment in a bewildered way, then, recognizing
him, drew back into the stone flagged passage with a sharp cry.

"You? You--Mr. Pujol?"

"_Oui, Mademoiselle, c'est moi._ It is I, Aristide Pujol."

She put her hands on her bosom. "It is rather a shock seeing you--so
unexpectedly. Will you come in?"

She led the way into a tiny parlour, very clean, very simple with its
furniture of old oak and brass, and bade him sit. She looked a little
older than when he had seen her at Aix-en-Provence. A few lines had
marred the comely face and there was here and there a touch of grey in
the reddish hair, and, though still buxom, she had grown thinner. Care
had set its stamp upon her.

"Miss Honeywood," said Aristide. "It is on account of little Jean that I
have come----"

She turned on him swiftly. "Not to take him away!"

"Then he is here!" He jumped to his feet and wrung both her hands and
kissed them to her great embarrassment. "Ah, mademoiselle, I knew it. I
felt it. When such an inspiration comes to a man, it is the _bon Dieu_
who sends it. He is here, actually here, in this house?"

"Yes," said Miss Anne.

Aristide threw out his arms. "Let me see him. _Ah, le cher petit!_ I
have been yearning after him for three years. It was my heart that I
ripped out of my body that night and laid at your threshold."

"Hush!" said Miss Anne, with an interrupting gesture. "You must not talk
so loud. He is asleep in the next room. You mustn't wake him. He is very
ill."

"Ill? Dangerously ill?"

"I'm afraid so."

"_Mon Dieu_," said he, sitting down again in the oak settle. To Aristide
the emotion of the moment was absorbing, overwhelming. His attitude
betokened deepest misery and dejection.

"And I expected to see him full of joy and health!"

"It is not my fault, Mr. Pujol," said Miss Anne.

He started. "But no. How could it be? You loved him when you first set
eyes on him at Aix-en-Provence."

Miss Anne began to cry. "God knows," said she, "what I should do without
him. The dear mite is all that is lef