had caught it up from her murmuring voice, he sang it loudly and
clearly as he crossed the court.

"'Here is our opera-singer!' exclaimed Madame Babette. 'Why, the Norman
grazier sings like Boupre,' naming a favourite singer at the neighbouring
theatre.

"Pierre was struck by the remark, and quietly resolved to look after the
Norman; but again, I believe, it was more because of his mother's deposit
of money than with any thought of Virginie.

"However, the next morning, to the wonder of both mother and son,
Mademoiselle Cannes proposed, with much hesitation, to go out and make
some little purchase for herself. A month or two ago, this was what
Madame Babette had been never weary of urging. But now she was as much
surprised as if she had expected Virginie to remain a prisoner in her
rooms all the rest of her life. I suppose she had hoped that her first
time of quitting it would be when she left it for Monsieur Morin's house
as his wife.

"A quick look from Madame Babette towards Pierre was all that was needed
to encourage the boy to follow her. He went out cautiously. She was at
the end of the street. She looked up and down, as if waiting for some
one. No one was there. Back she came, so swiftly that she nearly caught
Pierre before he could retreat through the porte-cochere. There he
looked out again. The neighbourhood was low and wild, and strange; and
some one spoke to Virginie,--nay, laid his hand upon her arm,--whose
dress and aspect (he had emerged out of a side-street) Pierre did not
know; but, after a start, and (Pierre could fancy) a little scream,
Virginie recognised the stranger, and the two turned up the side street
whence the man had come. Pierre stole swiftly to the corner of this
street; no one was there: they had disappeared up some of the alleys.
Pierre returned home to excite his mother's infinite surprise. But they
had hardly done talking, when Virginie returned, with a colour and a
radiance in her face, which they had never seen there since her father's
death."

CHAPTER VII.

"I have told you that I heard much of this story from a friend of the
Intendant of the De Crequys, whom he met with in London. Some years
afterwards--the summer before my lord's death--I was travelling with him
in Devonshire, and we went to see the French prisoners of war on
Dartmoor. We fell into conversation with one of them, whom I found out
to be the very Pierre of whom I had heard before, as hav