had cast observant glances, and had already thought to herself that “if nothing else turned up—­but there was time enough yet.”  Not so thought Pierre, who was madly in love with Victorine, and was so put about by her cold and capricious ways with him that he was fast coming to be good for nothing in the mill or on the farm.  But he is of no consequence in this account of the career of Mademoiselle, only this,—­that if it had not been for him she had not probably been away from the Golden Pear on the occasion of Willan Blaycke’s second visit.  Pierre had not shown himself at the inn for some weeks, and Victorine was uneasy about him.  Spite of her plans about a much finer bird in the bush, she was by no means minded to lose the bird she had in hand.  She was too clear-sighted a young lady not to perceive that it would be no bad thing to be ultimately Mistress Gaspard of the mill,—­no bad thing if she could not do better, of which she was as yet far from sure.  So she had inveigled her aunt into taking the notion into her head that she needed change, and the two had ridden over to Gaspard’s for a three days’ visit, the very day before Willan arrived.

“I warrant me he was set aback when I did tell him as he alighted that I feared me he would not be well served just at present, as there was no woman about the house,” said Victor, chuckling as he told Jeanne the story.  “He did give a little start,—­not so little but that I saw it well, though he fetched himself up with his pride in a trice, and said loftily:  ’I have no doubt all will be sufficient; it is but a bite of supper and a bed that I require.  I must go on at daybreak,’ But Benoit saw him all the evening pacing back and forth under the pear-tree, and many times looking up at the shut casement of the window where he had seen Victorine standing on the morning when he was last here.”

“Did he ask aught about her?” said Jeanne.

“Bah!” said Victor, contemptuously.  “Dost take him for a fool?  He will be farther gone than he is yet, ere he will let either thee or me see that the girl is aught to him.”

“I wish he had found her here,” said Jeanne.  “It was an ill bit of luck that took her away; and that Pierre, he is like to go mad about her, since these three days under one roof.  I knew not he was so daft, or I had not taken her there.”

“She were well wed to Pierre Gaspard,” said Victor; “mated with one’s own degree is best mated, after all.  What shall we say if the lad come asking her hand?  He will not ask twice, I can tell you that of a Gaspard.”

“Trust the girl to keep him from asking till she be ready to say him yea or nay,” replied Jeanne.  “I know not wherever the child hath learnt such ways with men; surely in the convent she saw none but priests.”

“And are not priests men?” sneered Victor, with an evil laugh.  “Faith, and I think there is nought which other men teach which they do not teach better!”