There was something so gentle, refined, and graceful in her figure, yet dominated by a girlish youthfulness of movement and gesture, that Alkali Dick was singularly interested.  He had probably never seen an ingenue before; he had certainly never come in contact with a girl of that caste and seclusion in his brief Parisian experience.  He was sorely tempted to leave his hedge and try to obtain a nearer view of her.  There was a fringe of lilac bushes running from the garden up the slope; if he could gain their shadows, he could descend into the garden.  What he should do after his arrival he had not thought; but he had one idea—­he knew not why—­that if he ventured to speak to her he would not be met with the abrupt rustic terror he had experienced at the hands of the servants.  She was not of that kind!  He crept through the hedge, reached the lilacs, and began the descent softly and securely in the shadow.  But at the same moment she arose, called in a youthful voice towards the open window, and began to descend the steps.  A half-expostulating reply came from the window, but the young girl answered it with the laughing, capricious confidence of a spoiled child, and continued her way into the garden.  Here she paused a moment and hung over a rose-tree, from which she gathered a flower, afterwards thrust into her belt.  Dick paused, too, half-crouching, half-leaning over a lichen-stained, cracked stone pedestal from which the statue had long been overthrown and forgotten.

To his surprise, however, the young girl, following the path to the lilacs, began leisurely to ascend the hill, swaying from side to side with a youthful movement, and swinging the long stalk of a lily at her side.  In another moment he would be discovered!  Dick was frightened; his confidence of the moment before had all gone; he would fly,—­and yet, an exquisite and fearful joy kept him motionless.  She was approaching him, full and clear in the moonlight.  He could see the grace of her delicate figure in the simple white frock drawn at the waist with broad satin ribbon, and its love-knots of pale blue ribbons on her shoulders; he could see the coils of her brown hair, the pale, olive tint of her oval cheek, the delicate, swelling nostril of her straight, clear-cut nose; he could even smell the lily she carried in her little hand.  Then, suddenly, she lifted her long lashes, and her large gray eyes met his.

Alas! the same look of vacant horror came into her eyes, and fixed and dilated their clear pupils.  But she uttered no outcry,—­there was something in her blood that checked it; something that even gave a dignity to her recoiling figure, and made Dick flush with admiration.  She put her hand to her side, as if the shock of the exertion of her ascent had set her heart to beating, but she did not faint.  Then her fixed look gave way to one of infinite sadness, pity, and pathetic appeal.  Her lips were parted; they seemed to be moving, apparently in prayer.  At last her voice came, wonderingly, timidly, tenderly:  “Mon Dieu! c’est donc vous?  Ici?  C’est vous que Marie a crue voir!  Que venez-vous faire ici, Armand de Fontonelles?  Repondez!”