g recognised M. Caudray, the
rector of the parish, had fallen back to allow him to pass; but he
remained upon the threshold. There was hesitation in his posture, but
decision in his looks, which now and then met those of Deruchette. With
regard to Gilliatt, whether by chance or design, he was in shadow, and
was only perceived indistinctly.

At first Mess Lethierry did not observe Caudray, but he saw Deruchette.
He went to her and kissed her fervently upon the forehead; stretching
forth his hand at the same time towards the dark corner where Gilliatt
was standing.

"Deruchette," he said, "we are rich again; and there is your future
husband."

Deruchette raised her head, and looked into the dusky corner bewildered.

Mess Lethierry continued:

"The marriage shall take place immediately, if it can; they shall have a
licence; the formalities here are not very troublesome; the dean can do
what he pleases; people are married before they have time to turn round.
It is not as in France, where you must have bans, and publications, and
delays, and all that fuss. You will be able to boast of being the wife
of a brave man. No one can say he is not. I thought so from the day when
I saw him come back from Herm with the little cannon. But now he comes
back from the Douvres with his fortune and mine, and the fortune of this
country. A man of whom the world will talk a great deal more one day.
You said once, 'I will marry him;' and you shall marry him, and you
shall have little children, and I will be grandpapa; and you will have
the good fortune to be the wife of a noble fellow, who can work, who can
be useful to his fellow-men; a surprising fellow, worth a hundred
others; a man who can rescue other people's inventions, a providence! At
all events, you will not have married, like so many other silly girls
about here, a soldier or a priest, that is, a man who kills or a man who
lies. But what are you doing there, Gilliatt? Nobody can see you. Douce,
Grace, everybody there! Bring a light, I say. Light up my son-in-law for
me. I betroth you to each other, my children: here stands your husband,
here my son, Gilliatt of the Bu de la Rue, that noble fellow, that great
seaman; I will have no other son-in-law, and you no other husband. I
pledge my word to that once more in God's name. Ah! you are there,
Monsieur the Cure. You will marry these young people for us."

Lethierry's eye had just fallen upon Caudray.

Douce and Grace had done