the new-comer, whose boots made a sharper, clearer sound on the
cobble-stones.

"Yes," Juliette heard him explain, "I am an Englishman, but I come
from Monsieur de Gemosac, for all that. And since Mademoiselle is
here, I must see her. It was by chance that I heard, on the road,
that there is fever at Saintes, and that she had returned home. I
was on my way to Saintes to see her and give her my news of her
father."

"But what news?" asked Marie, and the answer was lost as the
speakers passed into the doorway, the new-comer evidently leading
the way, the peasant and his wife following without protest, and
with that instinctive obedience to unconscious command which will
survive all the iconoclasm of a hundred revolutions.

There followed a tramping on the stairs and a half-suppressed laugh
as the new-comer stumbled upward. Marie opened the door slowly.

"It is a gentleman," she announced, "who does not give his name."

Juliette de Gemosac was standing at the far side of the table, with
the lamp throwing its full light upon her. She was dressed in
white, with a blue ribbon at her waist and wrists. Another ribbon
of the same colour tied back her hair, which was of a bright brown,
with curls that caught the light in a score of tendrils above her
ears. No finished coquette could have planned a prettier surprise
than that which awaited Loo Barebone, as he made Marie stand aside,
and came, hat in hand, into the room.