d, and she laid her hands on
him and blessed him.

That evening, as the sun set, Reine Allix kept her word, and went to the
young maiden who had allured the eyes and heart of Bernadou. Margot was
an orphan; she had not a penny to her dower; she had been brought up on
charity, and she dwelt now in the family of the largest landowner of the
place, a miller with numerous offspring, and several head of cattle,
and many stretches of pasture and of orchard. Margot worked for a hard
master, living indeed as one of the family, but sharply driven all day
long at all manner of housework and field work. Reine Allix had kept her
glance on her, through some instinctive sense of the way that Bernadou's
thoughts were turning, and she had seen much to praise, nothing to
chide, in the young girl's modest, industrious, cheerful, uncomplaining
life. Margot was very pretty, too, with the brown oval face and the
great black soft eyes and the beautiful form of the Southern blood that
had run in the veins of her father, who had been a sailor of Marseilles,
while her mother had been a native of the Provencal country. Altogether,
Reine Allix knew that her beloved one could not have done better or more
wisely, if choose at all he must. "Some people, indeed," she said
to herself as she climbed the street whose sharp-set flints had been
trodden by her wooden shoes for ninety years--"Some people would mourn
and scold because there is no store of linen, no piece of silver plate,
no little round sum in money with the poor child. But what does it
matter? We have enough for three. It is wicked indeed for parents to
live so that they leave their daughter portionless, but it is no fault
of the child's. Let them say what they like, it is a reason the more
that she should want a roof over her head and a husband to care for her
good."

So she climbed the steep way and the slanting road round the hill, and
went in by the door of the mill-house, and found Margot busy in washing
some spring lettuces and other green things in a bowl of bright water.
Reine Allix, in the fashion of her country and her breeding, was about
to confer with the master and mistress ere saying a word to the girl,
but there was that in Margot's face and in her timid greeting that lured
speech out of her. She looked long and keenly into the child's downcast
countenance, then touched her with a tender smile. "Petite Margot, the
birds told me a little secret to-day. Canst guess what it is?