she kneels and they bless her, and then say,
'Allez à votre chambre, notre bien-aimée.'"

"Poor darling creature. Pet, we must love
her very much. We must show her how happy
English girls are. We must make her like
England and all its ways, and then. Pet, if we
could only marry her to a nice Englishman, she
need never go back to those horrid people."

"Ah, ah!" laughed Pet; "at a match-make
again—see! Violante is amused at us. Take
her to her room." And Pet went away, and I
took the lovely Française to her room. She
was more lovely than ever when she removed
her bonnet and cloak. But, perceiving at once
that she knew nothing about unpacking or
putting away her things, I sent for Caroline, and
left them together.

By-and-by she came down stairs, and asking
permission, by an indescribable gesture, to
gather a rose, she sat and talked to it, and
played with it, as if it were a living thing. At
last Robert came, and was not I pleased with
his start of admiration? He did not think, he
told me afterwards, that anything made of mere
flesh and blood could be so exquisitely lovely.
And when Robert began to speak French to her,
she was more lovely still. Such a sparkling
countenance, such speaking eyes, lips that
seemed to have a new grace with every word
she spoke! Her attitudes, her little movements,
her slight embarrassments, were all perfect
studies.

"Truly," said Robert, "she hath a rare
beauty. I shall be curious to know of what
race that great ethnologist Erasmus will say she
springs from. Nevertheless, Patty, she will one
day be a plain old woman, with perhaps a
disposition to a beard."

"Oh, Robert, and I think that down on her
upper lip so lovely."

"Yes, my dear, it is, but it will not always
be down. The world is progressive as to the
growth of things. She says, Patty, she wishes
you would speak French to her. She longs to
tell you she loves you."

"My goodness me! Robert, have you
forgotten the three hundred a year that we are to
receive to make her learn English? No, though
I spoke French as well as—as she does—it
would go against my conscience to say even——"

"Au fait, Patty."

"Pooh, I wonder that you can be so silly.
I mean to begin to-morrow to teach her
English, while you build your barn."

"My barn will be something unique, I can
tell you, Mrs. Patty. I have a plan for hanging
the doors which almost tempts me to take
out a patent." ,

Now that was Robert's weakness—inventing
new things. I have hitherto steadily kept it
out of sight, but in regard to investigating the
insides of clocks, regulating the feeding of
boilers, making the pump pump its own water,
and the like, Robert was to the full as ridiculous
as Erasmus in his crotchets. He was for taking
out a patent about once a mouth.

"Robert," I have said to him, "l am sure
no one in the world would be more glad to see
you famous than me; but whoever hears of the
man who invented the holes to tear the postage
stamps easily, and was there ever a nicer invention?"
But there is one thing I must say with
regard to men, if they get a thing in their heads,
out it must come. They cannot chase it away, as
we women do, with another idea equally good.
Consequently, I thought it best to enter into
all the details of his barn, and as there is one
thing I can do, draw, I drew his plans, and his
crotchets, and his newly-invented door staples,
in a manner that made him say, still more
determinately, "I will take out a patent for hanging
doors and gates." But I must not forget the
lovely Violante.

"Deary me, ma'am," says Caroline, "what a
perfect lady she is. She can do nothing for
herself." Caroline's voice and looks betokened the
highest admiration. That is a weakness I find
very prevalent among servants. They like to
find you helpless in their hands. Not that mine
dare to say I am less of a lady because I am
both willing and capable of doing—but, dear
me, what is the use of writing about servants,
when I have such a great deal to say of the
lovely Viola, as I called her.

Well, we could not help loving her, not only
for her beauty, but her pretty ways. Only I
could not help wondering how her people, knowing
that she could not even hem a handkerchief,
sent her into a foreign land without a maid.

"But," remonstrated Pet, as I told her this,
"it was that she might learn English."

"But, alas! my dear Pet, though I have taken
every pains, and, indeed, never worked so hard
in my life—because, you know, one must do
one's duty for that three hundred pounds, she
cannot even ask for her glass of new milk, and
she has been here six weeks and more."

"French people cannot say the 'k.'"

"I suppose not, for she says 'milh,' and 'milt,'
for milk; and as for saying clock, it is utterly
beyond her power. Really I shall be ashamed
to see her relations, and she speaking no better
than that. We shall have to return the three
hundred pounds, and the barn is begun."

"Do not think of her relations. Where is
your fine scheme of a marriage?"

"It is of no use that she should marry
any one but a millionnaire. Is it not odd, that
I am getting to speak French quite cleverly,
just from hearing Viola and Robert talk, and
she can hardly say an English sentence."

"It will come, ever so much of a sudden."

"And she is very quick and clever—Erasmus
is delighted with her; and the way in which she
took Maggie's baby into her arms—oh, I never
saw such a lovely sight in my life! If ever she
marries, she will be the fondest mother."

As I said these words, there was a ring at
the door bell. I was drawing the section of
the roof of the barn, and Robert was looking
on, and Viola was at her usual work, murmuring
and singing low into the heart of a rose.
The door opened. "My lord markis," said
Caroline, apparently overwhelmed with having