He glanced back, with grave, searching eyes, scanning my face carefully.

I tried to smile, with a very faint, wan smile, I suppose, for the lightness had fled from my spirits, and my heart was heavy enough, God knows.
"Will it not do, mam'zelle ?" he asked, anxiously, and with his slow, solemn utterance; "it is not a place that will do for a young lady like you, is it?
I should have counselled you to go on to Jersey, where there is more life and gayety; it is my home, but for you it will be nothing but a dull prison." "No, no!" I answered, as the recollection of the prison I had fled from flashed across me; "it is a very pretty place and very safe; by-and-by I shall like it as much as you do, Tardif." The house was a low, picturesque building, with thick walls of stone and a thatched roof, which had two little dormer-windows in it; but at the most sheltered end, farthest from the ravine that led down to the sea, there had been built a small, square room of brick-work.

As we entered the fold-yard, Tardif pointed this room out to me as mine.
"I built it," he said, softly, "for my poor little wife; I brought the bricks over from Guernsey in my own boat, and laid nearly every one of them with my own hands; she died in it, mam'zelle.

Please God, you will be both happy and safe there!" We stepped directly from the stone causeway of the yard into the farm-house kitchen--the only sitting-room in the house except my own.

It was exquisitely clean, with that spotless and scrupulous cleanliness which appears impossible in houses where there are carpets and curtains, and papered walls.