The south wind’s secret, when it blows,
    Oh, what man knows? 
  How did it turn the rose’s bud
    Into a rose? 
  What went before, no garden shows;
    Only the rose!

  What hour the bitter north wind blows,
    The south wind knows. 
  Why did it turn the rose’s bud
    Into a rose? 
  Alas, to-day the garden shows
    A dying rose!

Jeanne had not to wait long.  It was only a few days after this conversation with Victorine,—­the big pear-tree was still snowy-white with bloom, and the tireless bees still buzzed thick among its boughs,—­when Jeanne, standing in the doorway at sunset, saw two riders approaching the inn.  At her first glance she recognized Willan Blaycke.  Jeanne’s mind moved quickly.  In the twinkling of an eye she had sprung back into the bar-room, and said to her father,—­

“Father, father, be quick!  Here comes Willan Blaycke riding; and another, an old man, with him.  Thou must tend the bar; for hand so much as a glass of gin to that man will I never.  I shut myself up till he is gone.”

“Nay, nay, Jeanne,” replied Victor; “I’ll turn him from my door.  He’s to get no lodging under this roof, he nor his,—­I promise you that.”  And Victor was bustling angrily to the door.

This did not suit Mistress Jeanne at all.  In great dismay inwardly, but outwardly with slow and smooth-spoken accents, as if reflecting discreetly, she replied, “He might do me great mischief if he were angered, father.  All the moneys go through his hand.  I think it is safer to speak him fair.  He hath the devil’s own temper if he be opposed in the smallest thing.  It has cost him sore enough, I’ll be bound, to find himself here at sundown, and beholden to thee for shelter; it is none of his will to come, I know that well enough.  Speak him fair, father, speak him fair; it is a silly fowl that pecks at the hand which holds corn.  I will hide myself till he is away, though, for I misgive me that I should be like to fly out at him.”

“But, Jeanne—­” persisted Victor.  But Jeanne was gone.

“Speak him fair, father; take no note that aught is amiss,” she called back from the upper stair, from which she was vanishing into her chamber.  “I will send Victorine to wait at the supper.  He hath never seen her, and need not to know that she is of our kin at all,”

“Humph!” muttered Victor.  “Small doubt to whom the girl is kin, if a man have eyes in his head.”  And he would have argued the point longer with Jeanne, but he had no time left, for the riders had already turned into the courtyard, and were giving their horses in charge to the white-headed ostler Benoit.  Benoit had served in the Golden Pear for a quarter of a century.  He had served Victor Dubois’s father in Normandy, had come with his young master to America, and was nominally his servant still.  But if things had gone by their right names at the Golden Pear, old Benoit would