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Pierre ! Pierre !" she screams as a forlorn hope. But no answer breaks the stillness. "I will run round to the other gate in five minutes," cries Dolores.

"Impossible, Mademoiselle," exclaims Marcelline. "Madame, your mother, forbade me to lose sight of you, and it is more than half a mile by the road;" all up hill too, and the poor soul groans heavily.

At this moment Guy comes forward shyly-very shyly for a handsome young fellow six feet high.

"If you permit me to try, Madame, I think I could reach the key," he says, taking off his hat very courteously.

Marcelline turns suspiciously-then seeing such a frank, good-looking face, she smiles and answers,

"Ah, Monsieur, you give yourself too much trouble.")

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23

CHAPTER II.

ACROSS THE HILLS OF NORMANDY.

|IR GUY broke a small bough from the

SIIR

trees that branched overhead, and began to pull off the twigs that covered it, Dolores watching him with shy curiosity the while. Then he pushed the stick through the bars of the gate, and after a few unsuccessful efforts, hooked up the key and handed it to Marcelline. The worthy soul was profuse in her thanks, and, feeling that such an obligation demanded something more than mere words, she invited him, albeit with some hesitation, to enter and rest himself. This was precisely what

Sir Guy wanted, but with the guilty consciousness of having sought the opportunity, he looked and felt a little doubtful of accepting the invitation. Glancing furtively at Dolores, he read such entreaty in her all unconscious eyes that he decided at once upon his answer.

"I don't like to trespass upon your hospitality," he said to Marcelline, "but I am making a few sketches, and if you would allow me a glimpse of the view from your garden, which I am sure must be lovely, I should feel really grateful."

Madame Power, her lady, was from home, Marcelline replied, but she felt sure that Madame would be charmed that Monsieur should make his sketch from her garden. Madame was English. Marcelline surmised that Monsieur was a compatriot.

"Oh, are you English ?" cried Dolores, breaking silence for the first time.

"Yes," Sir Guy answered, smiling at the

eager upturned face.

"And I too."

"I thought so yesterday, when you were standing under the apple-trees," said the young man, betraying himself unintentionally.

"You saw me yesterday !" cried Dolores in surprise, a faint blush coming into her cheek like the sun-kissed side of a peach.

Here Marcelline interrupted. She did not approve of her young lady conversing with a stranger in a language foreign to her ears.

"Mademoiselle, you had best come in doors, and Monsieur will make his choice of a point de vue for his picture."

But

Dolores hesitated. "You have made some sketches in Rouen, Monsieur ?" she said interrogatively, glancing at his book.

"Two or three. Would you like to see them ?"

"Ah, so much."

He opened the leaves at his last sketch. "That is the Rue Eau de Robec, that we came through just now; I know," cried the girl, clapping her hands. "Ah, Monsieur, what could you see to draw in that ugly, tumble-down old place ?"

"I thought it picturesque, Mademoiselle." "Picturesque !" and Dolores put her head on one side and made a little moue that was thoroughly French. "Picturesque! but how poor and uncomfortable;—and the smell! I always run through as fast as my feet will carry me. I hate all the old parts of the town, the narrow streets, where the upper stories nearly touch across the way, like the Rue de la Grosse Bouteille, and the Rue Damiette-I never go there unless I am forced. Sometimes Marcelline takes me to the Rue de l'Impératrice and the Rue des Carmes, and we look at the shops,

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