‘Madam,’ began he, ’I am, as you know, at middle age, yet a bachelor, and the reason, to be plain with you, is that I have not believed in women.  Pardon me, I would not be rude, but I am a business man.  I have no delusions left, yet it has occurred to me that a young woman who would make the lives of the saints her rule of life—­I do not believe in such things myself, but—­in short, madam, I ask for your daughter in marriage.’

He said it as if he was doing quite a kind thing, as, indeed, he thought he was.  Madame Verine thought so too, and with great astonishment, and even some apologies, gave away her daughter with grateful smiles.

Marie was married to the notary, and he made her very happy.  At first she was happy because he had good manners and she had such a loving heart that she loved him.  After a few years he found out that she was too good for him, and then he became a better man.

X

THE PAUPERS’ GOLDEN DAY

Betty Lamb was a comely girl; she was big to look at, being tall and strong.  She was never plump; she was never well clothed, not even in the best days of her youth.  She had been brought up in the work-house; after that she belonged to no one.  Her mind was a little astray:  she had strong, rude, strange ideas of her own; she would not be humble and work day in, day out, like other folk, and for that reason she never throve in the world.  She lived here and there, and did this and that.  All the town knew her; she was just ‘Betty Lamb’; no one expected aught of her.

It was a small town in the west of Scotland.  On different sides of it long lanes of humble cottages straggled out into the fields; the cottages had grey stone walls and red tiled roofs.  There were new grey churches in the town, and big buildings, and streets of shops.  The people in those days thought these very fine; they thought less about the real glory of the town—­a ruined abbey which stood upon an open heath just beyond the houses.

Three walls, two high gothic windows with the slender mullions unbroken, a few stately columns broken off at different heights from the ground, and one fragment of the high arch of the nave standing up against the sky in exquisite outline—­these formed the ruin.  It was built of the red sandstone that in its age takes upon it a delicate bloom of pink and white; it looked like a jewel in the breast of the grey hill country.  Furze grew within the ruin and for acres on all sides.  Sheep and goats came nibbling against the old altar steps.  A fringe of wallflower and grass grew upon the top of the highest arch and down the broken fragments of the wall.

All around the stately hills looked down upon the town and the ruin, and the sky that bent over was more often than not full of cloud, soft and grey.

Betty Lamb was getting on to middle age, about thirty, when she had a baby.  They had put her again in the poorshouse, but she rose when her baby was but a day old and went away from the place.