France; so no need of concealment, my world." During her few days of traveldear. I shall just tell her every thing. ling she had been conscious only of a sunAnd you need not mind even if Mr. Rivers shiny sky and smiling earth, of people does swoop down upon you some day-moving about her with lively tongues and after his fashion. But he can't- Avran- cheerful faces. Everything was entirely ches is too far off. Nor will I let him if I new, for she had never been abroad before; can help it. I shall tell him he must leave and whether the land was France or Parayou in peace, to regain your strength dise did not much matter. She had her and quiet your nerves. Good-by now, and child beside her, and that was enough. God bless you!"

The good countess, as she made this hurried farewell on board the French steamboat, left them. Almost before Hannah knew where she was, or what she had consented to, she found herself alone with Rosie and Grace. Lady Dunsmore did not say what deeper reason she had for thus effecting a temporary separation, sudden and complete, between the lovers, even though it involved what she called the "kidnapping" of little Rosie. Knowing the world and the men therein, a good deal better than her friend did, she foreboded for Hannah a blow heavier than any yet. That hapless elder brother, the present Sir Austin, was said to be in a dying state; and for Sir Bernard Rivers of the Moat House, the last representative of so long a line, to contract an illegal marriage, in which his wife would be shut out of society, and his children held by law as illegitimate, was a sacrifice at which the most passionate lover might well hesitate. While under these, or any circumstances, for him to doom himself for life to celibacy, was scarcely to be expected. Lady Dunsmore had come to know Mr. Rivers pretty well by this time. She liked him extremely - as most women did - but her liking did not blind her to a conviction, founded on a certain Scotch proverb: "As the auld cock craws, the young cock learns" that, when he was put to the crucial test, the world and his own family might be too strong for Sir Bernard. Therefore, on all accounts, she was glad at this time to get Hannah out of the way. But her plans, too hastily formed, somehow miscarried; for at Paris her two friends contrived to miss one another. When Miss Thelluson reached Avranches, it was to find Madame Arthenay away, and herself quite alone in that far-away place, with only Grace and the child.

-

At first this loneliness was almost pleasant. Ever since crossing the Channel she had felt lulled into a kind of stupor: the strange peace of those who have cut the cable between themselves and home, left all their burdens behind, and drifted away into what seems like "another and a better

She had Grace too. Many a servant is in trouble almost better than a friend, because a servant is silent Grace was, even to a fault. Trouble had hardened her sorely. Even when a few months before, the last blow had fallen, the last tie was broken between her and Jem Dixon - for their child had died

- poor Grace had said only, "It is best. My boy might have grown up to blame his mother for his existence." Words which, when Hannah heard, made her shiver in her inmost soul.

That the girl knew perfectly well her mistress's position with respect to Mr Rivers, was evident. When he came, the nurse abstained from intruding upon them, and kept other intruders away, in a manner which, though not obnoxiously shown, occasionally touched, sometimes vexed, but always humiliated, Hannah. Still, in her sad circumstances, she was glad to have the protection of even this dumb watch-dog of a faithful servant.

Grace seemed greatly relieved when the sea rolled between them and England. "It would take a good bit of time and trouble for any body to come after us here,” said she, as they climbed the steep hill on the top of which sits the lovely tower of Avranches, and looked back on the long line of straight road, miles upon miles, visible through the green, woody country, which they had traversed in driving from Granville. It feels quite at the world's end; and, unless folk knew where we were, they might as well seek after a needle in a hay-rick. A good job too!” muttered she, with a glance at the worn face of her dear mistress, who faintly smiled.

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'Nobody know our whereabouts exactly, Grace. We have certainly done what I often in my youth used to long to do - run away, and left no address."

"I'm glad of it, ma'am. Then you'll have a good long rest."

She had, but in an unexpected way. They found Madame Arthenay absent, and her little house shut up.

"We must take refuge in the hotel," said Hannah, with a weary look. "It seems a pleasant place to lie down and rest in."

It was; and for a few hours she lingered | So childish had her mind grown, so calmabout with Rosie in the inn garden- -aly receptive of all that happened, howgreen, shady, shut-in nook, with only a ever extraordinary, that when one day a stray tourist or two sitting reading on its kind-looking, elderly lady came into her benches; full of long, low espaliers, heavy room, and began talking broken English with Normandy pears. There were masses to Grace and the child, and to herself in of brilliant autumn flowers, French and the sweetest French she ever heard, HanAfrican marigolds, zinnias, and so on- nah accepted the fact at once, and took treasures that the child kept innocently scarcely more than half a day to get quite begging for, with a precocious enjoyment accustomed to Madame Arthenay. of the jingle of rhyme. "Give me pretty posie, to stick in Rosie 'ittle bosie! Hannah roused herself once or twice, to answer her little girl, and explain that the flowers were not hers to gather, and that Rosie must be content with a stray daisy or two, for she never exacted blind obedience where she could find a reason intelligible to the little wakening soul. But when, after a tear or two, Rosie submitted to fate, and entreated Tannie to "come with Rosie find daisies — lots of daisies!" Aunt Hannah also succumbed.

She was one of those women, of which France may boast so many, as unlike our English notion of a Frenchwoman as the caricatures of John Bull who strut about on the French stage are like a real Briton. Feminine, domestic-though, after having brought up two families, her sister's and her own, she now lived solitary in her pretty little nest of a house; a strict, almost stern Protestant; pure alike in act, and thoughts, and words you would hardly have believed she was born in the same land or came of the same race as the women who figure in modern French novels, or who are met only too often in modern Parisian society. As Grace said of her after she had gone, "Ma'am, I don't care how often she comes to see you, or how long she stays. She doesn't bother me one bit. She's just like an Englishwoman."

Which Madame Arthenay certainly was not, and would have smiled at the narrowjudging, left-handed compliment. But she was a noble type of the noblest bit of womanly nature, which is the same, or nearly the same in all countries. No wonder Lady Dunsmore loved her, or that, as she prophesied, Hannah loved her too-in a shorter time than she could have thought it possible to love any stranger, and a foreigner likewise.

I

After these ensued days-three or four - of which she never liked to speak much afterward. She lay in a nervous fever, utterly helpless; and when, had it not been for the few words of French which Grace was able to recall the Misses Melville having amused themselves once with teaching her and the quickness, intelligence, and tender-heartedness of the innservants good, simple French women, with the true womanly nature which is the "Strangers and foreigners, so we each same all the world over. things would are to one another," said the French lady have gone hard with Hannah Thelluson. early one morning, after she had sat up all More than once, vague and wandering night with Hannah to give Grace a rest. as her thoughts were, she bitterly repent-" And yet we do not feel so; do we? ed having "run away;" thereby snatch-think it is because we belong to the same ing Rosie from her natural protector, and kingdom - the kingdom of God." carrying her off into these strange lands, whence, perhaps, she might never be able to bring her back, but herself lie down to rise up no more. But by-and-by even this vain remorse vanished, and she was conscious of thinking about nothing beyond the roses on the chinz bed-curtains and the pattern of the paper-hangings- birds of paradise, with their sweeping tails; the angle which the opposite house made against the sky, the curious shape of its tiling, and the name of the boutiquier inscribed thereon, the first few letters of which were cut off by her window-ledge.

For underneath all her gayety and lightness of heart, Madame Arthenay was a very religious woman- as, she told Hannah, "we Protestants" generally were; thoroughly domestic and home-loving likewise.

"It is a mistake to suppose that we French all fall in love with one another's wives and husbands, or that we compel our children to make cruel mariages de convenance, as you English fancy we do. My sister's was a love-marriage, like mine, and all my children's were. You would find us not so very different from your

selves if you once came and settled among us. Suppose you were to try."

So said she, looking kindly at her; but though, as both knew, she had been told every thing, this was the first time Madame Arthenay had made any allusion to Miss Thelluson's future or her own past. Besides, they did not talk very much, she speaking chiefly in French, which Hannah found it an effort to follow. But she loved to read the cosmopolitan language of the sweet eyes, to accept the good offices of the tender, skilful, useful hands. Years afterward, when all its bitterness, and pain, and terror had died out, the only thing she remembered about that forlorn illness in a far-away French town was the kindness of all the good French people about her, and especially of Madame Arthenay.

But when she was convalescent, Hannah's heart woke up from the stupor into which it had fallen. She wanted to get well all in a minute, that she might have back her little Rosie, who had been spirited away from her by those compassionate French mothers, and was turning into une petite Française as fast as possible. Above all, she craved for news from home: it was a fortnight now since she had had one word one line. She did not wish-nay, she dreaded to have a letter from Bernard; but she would have liked to hear of him how he took the news of her flight, whether he was angry with her, and whether he missed his child. But no tidings came, and she did not want to write till she was better. Besides, Madame Arthenay took all the writing things

away.

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open window. A longing to "rise up and walk "came over her to go out and see what could be seen; above all to catch a glimpse of that glorious view which she had noticed in coming up the hill-the sea view, with Mont St. Michel in the distance; that wonderful rock castle, dedicated to her favourite angel (in the days when she was a poetical young lady she always had a statue of him in her room), St. Michael, the angel of high places, the angel who fights against the wrong.

It was a vagary, more like a school-girl than a grown woman; but Hannah could not help it. She felt she must go outmust feel the fresh air and sunshine, and try.if she could walk, if there was any remnant of health and strength left in her; for she would need both so much.

She was already dressed, for she had insisted upon it. Searching for her bonnet and shawl, and smiling with a pathetic pleasure to find she really could walk pretty well- also wondering, with childish amusement, as to whether, if Grace met her, she would not take her for a ghost-Hannah stole down through the quiet hotel, and out into the street that picturesque street of Avranches which leads towards the public gardens, and the spot where, within six square feet, is piled up the poor remnant of its once splendid cathedral.

Madame Arthenay had described it, and the various features of the town, during the gentle, flowing, unexciting conversation which she pertinaciously kept up by the invalid's bedside, so Hannah easily found her way thither; tottering a little at first, but soon drinking in the life-giving You are my slave, my captive. Ma- stimulus of that freshest, purest air, blowdame la Comtesse exacts it," said she, in ing on a hill-top from over the sea. All her pretty French. "You are not to do a her life Hannah had loved high places; single thing, nor to stir out of your room they feel nearer heaven somehow, and lift until I give you leave, which will likely be one above the petty pains and grovelling to-morrow. And now I must bid you pleasures of this mortal life. Even now, adieux, as I have a friend coming who will weak as she was, she was conscious of a stay the whole day. Could you rest here sensation of pleasure as if her life were quiet, do you think, and spare me an not all done. She wandered about, losing hour of Grace and Rosie? I should like her way, and finding it again; or amusing to show my friend the little English rose.' herself by asking it of those kindly, courtHannah promised vaguely, and was left eous French folk, who, whenever they alone to study, as heretofore, the flowers looked in her face, stopped and softened on the chinz and the long-tailed birds on the their voices as if they knew she had been wall. She was getting very weary of her ill and in trouble. One of them—a beimprisonment she who had never before nign-looking old gentleman, taking the air been confined to her room for a whole with his old wife, just like an English week. It was a lovely day; she knew that Darby and Joan-civilly pointed out to by the bit of intensely blue sky behind her the Jardin des Plantes as being a the house-tiles opposite, and the soft, sweet charming place to walk in, where madame air, that, together with the cheerful street would find easy benches to repose herself noises of a foreign town, entered in at the 'upon, and a sea-view, with Mont St. Michel

in it, that was truly "magnifique." Ma- of submitting to wrong, you could take dame's own beautiful island could furnish up your sword and hew it down But nothing finer. Hannah smiled, amused at you can not. I know, when the time the impossibility of passing for any thing comes, you will forsake me. But still but an English woman, in spite of her care-still- I shall have the child." ful French, and went thither.

"How did I find you? Why, I tracked you like a Red Indian. Of course I should to the world's end! What else did you "Ah, yes; poor Grace! she one day told expect, I wonder?" me her story." And then, turning suddenHannah hardly knew what she had ex-ly to Bernard, "I assure you, we are very pected what feared. In truth, she was content to bask in the present, with a passionate eagerness of enjoyment which those only know who have given up the future hopelessly and entirely.

Saint Roque was one of those chateaux of which there are many in Normandy, Ah, you should come and live among built about the time of the Crusades us," said Madame Arthenay. "In this our half mansion, half fortress. It was situNormandy, though we may be a century ated in a little valley, almost English in behind you in civilization, I sometimes its character, with sleepy cows basking in think we are a century nearer than you in the meadows, and blackberries - such are to the long-past Golden Age. We blackberries as little Rosie screamed at