it for me here. I shall be back in a
moment."

She reappeared a few minutes later, wearing a white hood with a cape, and
a knitted woolen shawl over her shoulders.

"This way!" said she, showing a path that led across the pasture-lands.

They walked along silently at first. The sky was clear, the wind had
freshened. Suddenly, as if by enchantment, the fog, which had hung over
the forest, became converted into needles of ice. Each tree was powdered
over with frozen snow, and on the hillsides overshadowing the valley the
massive tufts of forest were veiled in a bluish-white vapor.

Never had Julien de Buxieres been so long in tete-a-tete with a young
woman. The extreme solitude, the surrounding silence, rendered this dual
promenade more intimate and also more embarrassing to a young man who was
alarmed at the very thought of a female countenance. His ecclesiastical
education had imbued Julien with very rigorous ideas as to the careful
and reserved behavior which should be maintained between the sexes, and
his intercourse with the world had been too infrequent for the idea to
have been modified in any appreciable degree. It was natural, therefore,
that this walk across the fields in the company of Reine should assume an
exaggerated importance in his eyes. He felt himself troubled and yet
happy in the chance afforded him to become more closely acquainted with
this young girl, toward whom a secret sympathy drew him more and more.
But he did not know how to begin conversation, and the more he cudgelled
his brains to find a way of opening the attack, the more he found himself
at sea. Once more Reine came to his assistance.

"Well, Monsieur de Buxieres," said she, "do matters go more to your
liking now? You have acted most generously toward Claudet, and he ought
to be pleased."

"Has he spoken to you, then?"

"No; not himself, but good news, like bad, flies fast, and all the
villagers are singing your praises."

"I only did a very simple and just thing," replied Julien.

"Precisely, but those are the very things that are the hardest to do. And
according as they are done well or ill, so is the person that does them
judged by others."

"You have thought favorably of me then, Mademoiselle Vincart," he
ventured, with a timid smile.

"Yes; but my opinion is of little importance. You must be pleased with
yourself--that is more essential. I am sure that it must be pleasanter
now for you to live at Vivey?"

"Hm!--more be