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 mystery that dear, familiar Dick at times roused in her. It was, she thought, as if he were a changeling and heard the distant carolling of a strange ancestry:—the fairy-tale, again. But everything to-day was fairy-tale, and she did not know now whether she could so confidently have told Dick that it was a happy one. There was something very strange in the still, sunny garden; in the still, black form of the old lady, there beside her; in Dick standing a little apart and gazing up the garden path as if he expected to see someone walking down it towards him.

'And here is another pet, you see,' said Madame de Lamouderie, pointing with her stick at a commodious hutch that stood in the sun against the house. 'Our hare; he has lost a leg; but he is quite tame, like Coco, and comes to one's call.—Yes; it is not bad, the garden; not bad. But it is too much for one woman and an old man like Joseph.'

'Does she work in the garden? Is she young, your landlady?' asked Jill, looking down at the old hare, who, stretched at full length against the sunny wall, was dozing, head back, with an air of heraldic dignity. 'I like her for taking care of so many unhappy creatures. I imagined her an old lady.'

'Like me?' Madame de Lamouderie leaned on her stick and shook her head, smiling. 'No, we are not all old here. Marthe is till young.'

'Marthe? Is her name Marthe?'

'Yes; her mother was a Jacquard,' said Madame de Lamouderie; 'but her name is Marthe Ludérac.'