And from _la petite Gaud_ she had become Mademoiselle Marguerite, tall and serious, with earnest eyes.

Always left to herself, in another kind of solitude than that of the Breton coast, she still retained the obstinate nature of her childhood.
Living in large towns, her dress had become more modified than herself.
Although she still wore the _coiffe_ that Breton women discard so seldom, she had learned to dress herself in another way.
Every year she had returned to Brittany with her father--in the summer only, like a fashionable, coming to bathe in the sea--and lived again in the midst of old memories, delighted to hear herself called Gaud, rather curious to see the Icelanders of whom so much was said, who were never at home, and of whom, each year, some were missing; on all sides she heard the name of Iceland, which appeared to her as a distant insatiable abyss.

And there, now, was the man she loved! One fine day she had returned to live in the midst of these fishers, through a whim of her father, who had wished to end his days there, and live like a landsman in the market-place of Paimpol.
The good old dame, poor but tidy, left Gaud with cordial thanks as soon as the letter had been read again and the envelope closed.

She lived rather far away, at the other end of Ploubazlanec, in a hamlet on the coast, in the same cottage where she first had seen the light of day, and where her sons and grandsons had been born.

In the town, as she passed along, she answered many friendly nods; she was one of the oldest inhabitants of the country, the last of a worthy and highly esteemed family.
With great care and good management she managed to appear pretty well dressed, although her gowns were much darned, and hardly held together.
She always wore the tiny brown Paimpol shawl, which was for best, and upon which the long muslin rolls of her white caps had fallen for past sixty years; her own marriage shawl, formerly blue, had been dyed for the wedding of her son Pierre, and since then worn only on Sundays, looked quite nice.
She still carried herself very straight, not at all like an old woman; and, in spite of her pointed chin, her soft eyes and delicate profile made all think her still very charming.