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The old Cure the parish took interest in her, and gave her lessons, and, as Mere Giraud would have held her strictly to them, even if she had not been tractable and studious by nature, she was better educated and more gently trained than her companions. The fact was, however, that she had not many companions. Some element in her grace and beauty seemed to separate her from the rest of her class. Village sports and festivities had little attraction for her, and, upon the whole, she seemed out of place among them. Her stature, her fair, still face, and her slow, quiet movements, suggested rather embarrassingly to the humble feasters the presence of some young princess far above them.

“Pouf!” said a sharp-tongued belle one day, “I have no patience with her. She is so tall, this Laure, that one must be forever looking up to her, and I, for one, do not care to be forever looking up.”

The hint of refined pride in her demeanor was Mere Giraud’s greatest glory.

“She is not like the rest, my Laure,” she would say to her son. “One can see it in the way in which she holds her head’. She has the quiet, grave air of a great personage.”

There were many who wondered that Valentin showed no jealousy or distaste at hearing his sister’s praises sounded so frequently to his own detriment. There was no praise for him. The poor, fond mother’s heart was too full of Laure. Her son had been a bitter disappointment to her, and, to her mind, was fitted for nothing but to make himself an adoring slave to his sister’s beauty; and this, the gentle, generous fellow certainly was. He was always ready to serve her; always affectionate, always faithful; and Mere Giraud, who was blind to, or careless of, all his loving, constant labor for her own comfort, deigned to see that he did his duty toward Laure.

“He has at least the sense to appreciate her as far as he is able,” she said.

So when Valentin, who had a talent for engraving, was discovered by some one who understood his genius, and could make use of it, and was offered a place in the great, gay city, Mere Giraud formed an ambitious plan. He should take Laure and find her a position also; she had the fingers of a fair magician, and could embroider marvelously. So she trusted Laure to him, and the two bade farewell to St. Croix and departed together. A month passed, and then there came a letter containing good news. Valentin was doing well, and Laure also. She had found a place in a great family where she was to embroider and wait upon a young lady. They were rich people, and were kind, and paid her well, and she was happy.

“When they first saw her, they were astonished,” wrote the simple, tender Valentin. “I went with her to present herself. My employer had recommended her. There is a son who is past his youth, and who has evidently seen the world. He is aristocratic and fair, and slightly bald, but extremely handsome still. He sat holding a newspaper in his long, white fingers, and when we entered, he raised his eyes above it and looked at Laure, and I heard him exclaim under his breath, ‘Mon Dieu! as if her beauty fairly startled him.”

When the Cure, to whom the proud mother showed the letter, read this part, he did not seem as rejoiced as Mere Giraud had expected. On the contrary, he looked a little grave, and rubbed his forehead.

“Ah, ah!” he said; “there lies the danger.”

“Danger!” exclaimed Mere Giraud, starting.

He turned, and regarded her with a rather hesitant air, as if he were at once puzzled and fearful,–puzzled by her simplicity, and fearful of grieving her unnecessarily.

“Valentin is a good lad,” he said. “Valentin will be watchful,–though perhaps he is too good to suspect evil.”