ugly, the very refuse of the species--all but one, who was a saint for
beauty of countenance and devoutness of mien. Harry glanced at him and
his companions as if they were beings of a strange and mysterious race;
and the numerous votive offerings to "Our Lady of La Salette" and
elsewhere he eyed askance with the expression of a very sound Protestant
indeed. The lovely luxuriant architecture, the foliated carvings, were
dim in the evening light. A young sculptor, who was engaged in the work
of restoring some of these rich carvings, came down from his perch while
the strangers stood to admire them.

That night by nine o'clock Bessie Fairfax was in the _dortoir_ at Madame
Fournier's--a chamber of six windows and twenty beds, narrow, hard,
white, and, except her own and one other, empty. By whose advice it was
that she was sent to school a week in advance of the opening she never
knew. But there she was in the wilderness of a house, with only a
dejected English teacher suffering from chronic face-ache, and another
scholar, younger than herself, for company. The great madame was still
absent at Bayeux, spending the vacation with her uncle the canon.

It was a moonlight night, and the jalousies looking upon the garden were
not closed. Bessie was neither timid nor grievous, but she was
desperately wide-awake. The formality of receiving her and showing her
to bed had been very briefly despatched. It seemed as if she had been
left at the door like a parcel, conveyed up stairs, and put away.
Beechhurst was a thousand miles off, and yesterday a hundred years ago!
The doctor and Harry Musgrave could hardly have walked back to Thunby's
hotel before she and her new comrade were in their little beds. Now,
indeed, was the Rubicon passed, and Bessie Fairfax committed to all the
vicissitudes of exile. She realized the beginning thereof when she
stretched her tired limbs on her unyielding mattress of straw, and