She bounded round him and the books
laughing, skipping, clapping her hands, in
wild, beautiful delight.

For months, between her light household
duties, so quickly and happily performed,
and the frequent sittings she still continued
to give him, the books were studied with
earnest attention. Some of them Claude
already knew; the rest he now read, and
constantly of an evening questioned his pupil,
drawing out and correcting her impressions
with a pride and interest strangely new and
pleasant to him.

As he had anticipated, Edmée grew before
his eyes into striking and remarkable beauty.
He noted the progress with a mingling of
pleasure and uneasiness, and watched over
her with a jealous care. Few visitors came
to his painting-room; but, at the sound of a
strange footstep, a look warned Edmée to
retreat, and she fled through the back-door
like a mouse into its hole.

Another year and another passed by, and
Edmée was seventeen.

"It is certain," said Claude to himself,
"this cannot go on for ever. I am not
immortal, and if some day a misfortune happens
to me, what becomes of the child? I must
find a husband for her!"

This is the French mode of settling all
such affairs, which are conducted as any
other matters purely of business might be.

The idea was a good one, certainly; yet
many difficulties presented themselves.
Claude's mode of life, and unworldly,
unbusiness-like habits made him the last man in
the world to set about match-making. He
knew nobody who in the least degree suited
his notion of the sort of husband to whom he
would confide the happiness of his adopted
child. He had a vague consciousness that, in
matrimonial affairs, there were troublesome
details of money matters to be gone through,
and on this part of the question he felt
dreadfully incompetent to enter. He was
quite willing to give Edmée anything and
everything he possessed; but how much that
might be, or how he was to find it out and
get it in train, and what were likely to be
the pretensions or arrangements on the other
side, it put him into a state of hopeless
desperation to think of. All this he admitted to
himself; but he did not admit—for the thing
was too vague and unformed for admission or
actual contemplation—that a little aching
jealousy, a numb pain, lay at the bottom of
his heart, when he thought of giving to
another the treasure that for four years had
lightened his life, and given him new and
human feelings and a hitherto unknown love
and sympathy with his race.

Edmée was eighteen, and still Claude had
found no husband for her.

Hitherto he had worked alone; now, the
thought and the care of her, the time he
devoted to her education and to her amusement,
rendered it impossible to him to do all he
had been wont to do in his painting-room.
He resolved, therefore, to look out for a
student—a good student—who might never
in word or deed break on the cloistral strictness
and purity with which Claude's jealous
care had surrounded his pet.

After long search the wonderful student
was discovered, and installed in the painting-
room. Paul was essentially a pattern
student. The son of a rich farmer, he found
painting the fields infinitely more to his taste
than ploughing them—drawing his father's
oxen to driving them. The father, another
pattern in his species, considered that his
labourers might perform the ploughing and
driving work, and that his son would not be
wasting his time in spending it as his taste
dictated.

It was the fête at St. Cloud, and Claude
went there in the omnibus, with Paul at one
side and Edmée at the other.

Arrived at the park, the sight of the people
made him shrink a little.

"Go on, children—I'll follow you."

Arm in arm the joyous children went on,
laughing and chatting gaily.

"Yes," said Claude to himself, "they are
young, they are happy, happy in themselves,
happy in the scene, happy in each other's
society—if—"

A thought for the first time flashed across
him with a thrill of such strange mingled
contradicting sensations, that he passed his
hand across his brow and stopped, then
quickened his steps—he hardly knew why.
But the thought that had struck into
his brain, stayed there, and he took it
and handled and examined it and
familiarised himself with it. Strange, it had
never presented itself to him before! Here
was the husband he had been looking for for
Edmée during the last two—three—years.
Here, under his hand! Yes; it was the
thing of all others to suit. If the father
would but approve, he saw no obstacle.
Paul—Paul! he would be but too happy—who
would not? to marry Edmée; and Edmée—
she liked Paul, she certainly liked him;
how gay they were, what friends, how happy
together! Yes; he would go bravely into
the thing, money matters and all, and present
the question to the father. He did so, and
before the week was out received a reply in
the affirmative. The pattern farmer had
looked favourably at the thing from the first.
All he heard of Claude and his adopted child
perfectly satisfied him. He gave the least
possible amount of mystification to Claude's
brain about the question of finance, and
expressed his readiness to the match taking
place as soon as Claude and the young people
thought fit.

Claude was sitting at work with Paul.
There was a long silence; the student
had made one or two attempts to break it,
but the monosyllabic replies of the master
had discouraged these, and they were