The little city of Sainte-Barbe was the quaintest and most slumbrous of little French towns, and that is saying a great deal. The walls were intact and in good order, supplying the inhabitants with pleasant walks, which few people took advantage of. Their pretence at defence was antiquated and useless, but then there was nothing to defend nor any enemy intending to attack. From the ramparts you looked out upon a great plain bounded towards the north with hills, and dropping southwards into those low swelling slopes and hillocks which form the best vineyards. Sainte-Barbe was on the edge of a rich wine country verging upon the CÔte d’Or; but there were no vineyards close to the town, which rose up, with its cluster of towers, its high walls and peaked roofs, out of the plain. It is to be supposed that in former days it had been a centre of more important life, for the cathedral was large enough for a metropolis, and the great town-hall, with its fine belfry, looked like one of the warlike municipalities of the middle ages. These two great buildings stood and sunned themselves, resting from whatever labours they might once have known, in a sort of dull beatitude—the one with half-a-dozen erratic worshippers coming and going, the other with three little red-legged soldiers under its grand gateway. Now and then a tourist who had heard of these buildings stopped for a few hours on his way from Italy to Paris to see them; but the fame of them was fast fading out, now that nobody thinks of posting from Paris to Dijon, and it was the rarest thing in the world to see a stranger in the streets. For the first week the townsfolk said among themselves, “Tiens! voilÀ les Anglais!” when Mr Goulburn and his daughters appeared; but at the end of that time became familiar with the appearance of them. It was a curious life which they led at the Lion d’Or—in a quaint discomfort, which may be amusing to tourists in high spirits, but to the timid and troubled English girl was the strangest travesty of existence. The mixture of small discomforts with great troubles is perhaps the combination above all others which procures most entire and complete confusion in life. And the want of a room to sit in other than that wooden bedroom, where every movement of a chair jarred upon the bare planks, began after a while to mingle in Helen’s mind with all the painful circumstances of their flight, so that she scarcely knew what it was that made her so wretched, so disjoined from all her past. Twice a day the little party ate in company with some of the best people in Sainte-Barbe. M. le Notaire, who was unmarried, an old bachelor, and M. le Maire, who was a widower, took their meals regularly at the Lion d’Or. They tied their napkins round their bottle of wine when they left after one meal, and tucked them under their chins when they next sat down. On Sunday there was an officer who came in his uniform, with his sword clanking, who impressed Janey with great awe, accompanied by his wife and their little boy and bonne, who sat down next her charge and dined too, cutting the child’s meat for him, and having a little wine poured out for her by her mistress from the family bottle. Janey could not eat her own dinner, so absorbed was she in watching this party. She pulled Helen’s dress to call her attention a dozen times in a minute. “Oh! what would nurse say?” she cried, with big eyes of astonishment. “Look, Helen! he has some of that that you would not let me have, and he is so little—much more little than me. And he has dot wine: and oh, look! he has put his knife in his mouth—he will kill himself. And now he has his hand in, the nasty little boy!”

“Cela amuse mademoiselle de voir manger mon petit,” said the lady across the table in a tone of offence.

Helen blushed as if she had been caught in a mortal sin. “Oh no, madame—only—elle ne sait pas——” she murmured in apology.

“He has dot his knife in his mouth, and that will kill him,” said Janey. “She ought to tell him. Oh, little boy, little boy! couteau—bouche!” she cried, with the anxiety of her age to put everything right.

Mr Goulburn tried to apologise. “My little girl thinks it is her business to set everybody right. She takes it upon her to regulate my conduct and manners. I hope you will forgive the little impertinent. Besides, she is astonished to see the bonne by your side, madame, at table. It is contrary to our English usage. Forgive her,” he said.

“Oh, de rien, monsieur,” said the French lady, politely. “We all know that England is the most aristocratic of countries. Do not apologise; there is great good in that—the canaille are kept in their place.”

“The canaille are in all places, madame,” said M. le Maire. “They are among us when we least suspect it. Persons of the best manners, the most irreproachable in appearance——”

“Ah, if M. le Maire takes the point of view of the highest morals! It is well known that the blessed apostles were but fishermen and labourers,” said the lady; “but we could not now invite a sailor smelling of the sea, or a ploughman fresh from the fields, to eat with us. There are lines of demarcation.”

“Madame,” said the Maire, “I have been warned from the police of a person completely comme il faut, handsome, young, tall, well brought up, a hero of romance—you would be enchanted with his description,—who has done everything that a man can do of perfidious and wicked—if he should pay us a visit here——”

“Ah, monsieur, what a dreadful idea! But perhaps it is evil companions, bad influences—and then, when one is young, everything may be recovered.”

“With le beau sexe youth is always the first of virtues,” said the Notaire.

“Listen—they are not always young; madame should have seen the journals of England a little time ago—monsieur here could tell us, no doubt. A great company of merchants in London has lately made bankruptcy. Impossible to tell you what ruin they have produced. The great, the small, widows and orphans, poor officers in retreat, little functionaries, priests—what in England they call clergymen—all ruined, without a penny, without bread!” said the Maire, throwing up his hands. “Mon Dieu! even to hear of it makes one suffer. And figure to yourself the chief—he who was first in this compagnie, a man rich as the Indies, living en prince, and for whom nothing was too good, has taken flight, instead of ending his life with a pistol-shot, as would have been done in France—has taken flight, with enormously of money in his pockets! You have seen it, perhaps, in the journals. Such things happen only in England. Mon Dieu! he has saved himself with the money of others. And one talks of canaille!” the Maire concluded, wiping his forehead. He was warm with indignation, feeling the force of his own eloquence.

Helen did not understand all this—or nearly all; but she caught a word now and then, and her father’s face filled her with alarm. It had been smiling enough at first, though with that drawn and artificial smile which she had only remarked of late; but by degrees Mr Goulburn’s head had dropped, he stooped over his plate, fixing his attention on that, yet now and then directed a furtive glance from under his eyebrows at the speaker. And his face grew ghastly pale, yet he took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead with it. His hands trembled as he raised his glass to his lips. The vin du pays was not likely to inspire much courage, but he drank a large quantity, large enough to make the Maire and the Notaire stare. All this Helen remarked, though perhaps no one else did. He did everything he could to preserve appearances; but her attention was roused, and she was on the alert and saw everything, and almost more than everything. What had he to do with this story of disgrace and ruin? Some one came in at this moment, a stranger, who was placed in a seat on her other hand; but she was so intent upon her father that she did not even see who it was. There was a pause, which seemed terrible to her—and to him; but which to the others was a most natural and simple, nay, flattering moment of silence after the Maire’s impressive remarks.

“You say such things happen only in England; is no one ever bankrupt in France?” Mr Goulburn said at last.

“Alas!” said M. le Maire, “misfortune comes in all countries. But a French commerÇant bears it—not so well as your countrymen, monsieur. I have known men who have undergone that and now hold up their heads again; and I have known men, ma foi! who could not bear it, who thought of nothing but a pistol-shot. One follows the customs of one’s country. I have heard that Englishmen grow fat upon it. Pardon! you understand that is a pleasantry. No one can have more respect for the English than I.”

“It is a pleasantry, M. le Maire, which an Englishman hears with very little pleasure,” said Mr Goulburn. Helen looking at him with her anxious eyes, felt that her father was glad of some cause for seeming angry, and caught at this justification of his own excitement. But while her mind was intent upon him, watching him with an eager anxiety and curiosity beyond words, she started to hear herself addressed on the other side. “Is it possible that it is Miss Goulburn? Can I be mistaken? a pleasant voice said in English. She turned round quickly, and found a fair-haired and very sunburnt young man, whom she did not at first recognise, and upon whom she looked with suspicion and alarm. Her fears had been excited, she could scarcely tell how or why. Every one who knew her seemed a possible enemy. Were they not fugitives, whatever might be the cause?

“You do not remember me,” said the new-comer; “which, perhaps, is not wonderful. I left Fareham four years ago, Miss Goulburn; but I think I cannot be mistaken in you. You were only a child then; and now!—but still I think it is you: and perhaps you will remember my name—Charley Ashton? I went to India——”

“Yes, I recollect. Are you going home now to—to Fareham?” Helen said, with fright in her eyes.

“That we should meet here of all places in the world! Yes, I am on my way home; and there is all about the cathedral in Murray, and besides, there is a bit of engineering I wanted to see, and I had a day to spare,—what a lucky chance for me! You, I suppose, are making the grand tour, as it used to be called. Travelling, like necessity, makes one acquainted with strange quarters. This is not much like Fareham, is it?” he said, with a laugh. That careless, happy laugh, without thought of evil! Helen looked at, admiring it as an old man might have done.

“No; we are only here—for a little while.”

She knew by instinct that this would be their last night at Sainte-Barbe, and that she must not encourage any renewal of acquaintance. The young man gazed at her with such a look of kindly inquiry, almost tender in the sympathy that mingled with it, that Helen felt the tears come to her eyes. He divined that there was something to be sorry for, and he was ready to be sorry and to sympathise, whatever the trouble might be—though the troubles, he said to himself with a smile, of the rich man’s daughter were not likely to be very hard to bear.

“That is like my luck,” he said; “unless you are going back to England, which would be the best of all. Then I should ask leave to follow in your wake. There is no one now to care much when I get home; a day or two sooner or later doesn’t matter. My mother is not there now to mind. And to tell the truth, Miss Goulburn,” said young Ashton, “I am just as glad to put off the first plunge. Poor old father! I daresay he’ll be glad to see me; but to find her not only gone, but with another in her place!”

“Poor Mr Ashton was so lonely,” said Helen, coming out of her own troubles for one moment, “and Miss Temple is so kind: it does you good to speak to her. She never meant any harm. She was so sorry for him—do not be angry with Miss Temple. I think I love her,” the girl said, the tears slowly gathering in her eyes, “better—oh yes, a great deal better than any one—than any other woman in the world.”

“Do you?” he said, touched by the sight. Charley Ashton did not know how many other troubles in poor Helen’s heart found grateful outlet in those tears. They dropped upon her dress and frightened her lest any one else should see them, but the young man was altogether melted by Helen’s emotion. “That shall be my best reason for loving—at least for liking her too,” he said. “Thank you for showing me how much you care for her. What a lucky inspiration I had to come to Sainte-Barbe! I had been just thinking of you, wondering if you would be much changed—if, perhaps, I should find you at Fareham.”

“I think I am very much changed,” she said, sadly shaking her head—while he looked at her, smiling, with a look of subdued yet tender admiration. He did not venture to look all he felt, yet he could not keep it from appearing.

“Yes, I think you are changed,” he said, with a confused laugh. She was thinking of the last week, he of the last five years. He had admired her then as a child—for Helen had been tall and precocious. Now he could not tell her how much more he admired her as a woman, and Helen was too sadly preoccupied to interpret justly the lingering glance that dwelt upon her. She had never had any lover, nor was she at all aware that the vicar’s son had any special recollection of her; that he should recognise her at all, filled her with surprise. But at the same time the sense of something sympathetic by her side, of some one who was young like herself, and English, and looked kindly at her, gave the girl a sense of consolation. He laughed, but certainly he meant nothing unkind. The moment after, young Ashton gave Helen, all unawares, a sudden blow which forced her back upon herself. He said with a little eagerness, but calmly, as if it were the most ordinary question in the world, “Do you go back soon to Fareham? I have come home on sick leave. I shall have only a little while at home. I hope I shall see you while I am there.”

“Oh!” said Helen, trembling all over with the shock, “I do not know—papa has never told me. Perhaps—we may not be back for a long time; perhaps—not at all. I don’t know.”

“Not back at all! Has Mr Goulburn sold it?” young Ashton said, and his changed countenance grew long. He was as much disappointed as she was startled; and for a moment both looked, though from very different reasons, as though not at all indisposed to mingle their tears.

“I don’t know,” said Helen. She looked away from him, her voice shook,—there was trouble indescribable in her face. And he remembered that he had been gone for four years; that he had not heard very much about them for some time back; that many changes might happen, especially in the fortunes of a man in business, however great he might be, and apparently beyond the assaults of fortune. What could young Ashton say or do to show his sympathy? He did not even know how far he might inquire.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. Helen looked up at him timidly, and gave him a little nod of assent, and a faint smile. She granted him his pardon freely. She thanked him for the feeling in his face, but she said nothing more. The secret was not hers, and she did not even know what the secret was. Meanwhile her father had begun to see what was going on. He had looked furtively from the corner of his eyes at the stranger, and had ended by remembering who he was; and he did not know what young Ashton knew, where he had come from, what he might be doing there. When he saw that Helen was fully engaged in conversation, he got up softly and walked away. The sight of a face he had once known made his heart beat wildly, and filled him with a sickening sensation. He went out by a door behind, so as never to come within the stranger’s range of vision. What did he want here? and what would the girl tell him? Would she have the sense to hold her tongue? though, indeed, the very sight of her would be enough if young Ashton knew. He began, without a moment’s delay, to put back his clothes into his portmanteau, and prepare again for flight. Who would have thought that such a thing could happen here? Had the danger been greater, he would have understood. For the sudden appearance of pursuers in search of him, he was always prepared, but not for the ludicrous simplicity of a peril like this; a neighbour’s son! What evil genius had brought him here? It seemed a very long time before Helen came up-stairs. It had relieved her to see her father disappear, and she had yielded to the pleasure of talking to her contemporary, her old friend (as she thought). But after all, in about ten minutes she had held out her hand to him timidly, rising up as she did so, to go away. “But I shall see you to-morrow?” he said. She only smiled faintly and said, “Perhaps,” but even as she said so shook her head. In her heart she felt certain that they would leave Sainte-Barbe that night.

And so they did. In France all the great trains go by night; there was one very late which called at Sainte-Barbe, on the way to Paris. The clatter and clang of the omnibus which met this train disturbed the whole town at midnight so much, that M. le Maire had set every kind of machinery in motion to have it discontinued; but as the convenience of the two extremities of the railway, Marseilles and Paris, forbade this, the authorities paid no attention to the protest of Sainte-Barbe. The few guests in the Lion d’Or felt a double grievance this night, in that the omnibus, after making its usual noisy circuit from the stables, waited, pawing and champing for five minutes, under the porte cochÈre, having baggage placed upon it, and carrying away travellers at that hour. Who could they be? Oh, les Anglais: that went without saying. Certainly les Anglais; they were the sort of people who would do such a thing simply because it was unlike the rest of the world—though it was the action of a fiend, the landlady exclaimed afterwards, to take such an infant from her rest at such an hour. Young Ashton was still astir, smoking his cigar out of the window with a quite unnecessary regard for the feelings of his hosts, when the omnibus turned out of the great doorway. He thought he saw a pale face look up at his window in the uncertain glimmer of the moon, which was dim with flying clouds, and he let his cigar drop on the head of an ostler below in consternation. Could it be that they had gone away? “Gone away, because I am here!” this young man said to himself. But it seemed a thing too impossible to be true.