as though full of
diamonds in the sunlight.

"Father Anton--you are a dear!" Myrna cried impetuously.

Her eyes roved delightedly here and there. There was a little trellis
with flowers over the back door--that little outhouse would do
splendidly as a garage. And then the front door opened, and her eyes
fixed on a girl's figure on the threshold--and somehow the figure was
familiar.

"Who is that, Father Anton?" she demanded.

"But it is Marie-Louise--who else?" smiled the priest. "I will call
her."

"No," said Myrna; "we will go in."

Of course! How absurd! She recognised the girl now. It was the girl
who had passed them on the bridge--Myrna's sunbonnet swung a little
abstractedly again--with Jean Laparde.

Father Anton bustled forward.

"Marie-Louise," he said, as they reached the door, "this is the lady
and gentleman who are to take the house, and--"

"Oh, but I think we have seen each other before," interposed Myrna
graciously. "Was it not you, Marie-Louise, who passed us on the bridge
yesterday afternoon?"

Marie-Louise's dark eyes, deep, fearless, met the grey ones--and
dropped modestly.

"Yes, mademoiselle," she said.

"Certainly!" said Henry Bliss pleasantly. "I remember you too,
and--ah!" With a sudden step, quite forgetting the amenities due his
daughter, he brushed by her into the room, and stooped over the clay
figure of the beacon. He picked it up, looked at it in a sort of
startled incredulity, as though he could not believe his eyes; then,
setting it down, went to the window, threw up the shade for better
light, and returned to the clay figure. And then, after a moment, he
began to mutter excitedly. "Yes--undoubtedly--of the flower of the
French school--Demaurais, Lestrange, Pitot--eh?--which?
And--yes--here--within a day or so--it is quite fresh!" He rushed back
to the doorway to Father Anton. "Who has been in the village
recently?"--his words were coming with a rush, he had the priest by the
shoulders and was unconsciously shaking him. "Was it a man with long
black hair over his coat collar and a beak nose? Was it a little short
man who always jerks his head as he talks? Or was it a big fellow,
very fat, and, yes, if it were Pitot he would probably be drunk?
Quick! Which one was it?"

Father Anton, jaw dropped, dumb with amazement, could only shake his
head. This American! Had he gone suddenly mad?

"Good heavens, dad, what is the matter?" Myrna cried out.

He p