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A BARRIER ROYAL
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guardian came to request her presence in the chateau to meet her fiance.
How he had rushed here on the very heels of the king's command! Such ardor in an acceptable lover would have heen a pretty compliment, but at this haste on the part of the prince, Marie's heart turned sick.
"This, Princess,7' murmured the knight, with what suavity he could muster when she had come into the room, "is his highness, Prince D'Conti, your affianced husband."
Then he left the two together.
"Sweet innocent!" The prince came forward with a winning smile and attempted to take the princess in his arms. "You are the most beautiful bride. I am indeed the most fortunate of men."
Furiously the girl pushed him away, her mouth twisted in scorn.
' ' Bride ? Not yours. I would rather die than marry such as you."
' ' You little fool — you shall pay only the greater price "
The ingratiating smile had retreated to his p a 1 n t e d brow, in the shape of a heavy scowl. She held her ground, staring him down, as his plumed hat swept the floor in mock deference. Then she fled.
"Oh! Annette," she sobbed, once in her tire-woman's arms, "it always seemed to me that marriage should be a very beautiful thing — a love between two people like that sunlight we saw in the garden. Think of the sacrilege of marrying me to such a man. If I were only a peasant like you, Annette "
Annette, whose practical mind had been at work even in the midst of all her sympathy, sprang up.
"Dis done! why not?" she cried. "You shall become a peasant, and T will send you to my mother in the
country as a little friend of mine. No one will know who you are, and you can live a new life until you have blown from Monsigneur 's mind."
And so it was that a little, frocked peasant stole out of the chateau gates that evening, leaving a much perturbed tire-woman to announce a strange disappearance to the wrathful knight next day.
When Marie the Peasant took up
PIERRE MEETS MARIE AS A PEASANT
her work among the grape-pickers near the mud-plastered cottage of Annette's mother, she forgot all about Marie the Princess, and her dimples began to dance again, and her fair cheeks to brown in the sun. And her ruddy hair, growing thick to her low forehead, was twined back close from her face.
And then a glory that was brighter than the sun itself covered the whole world for her, for she was finding the thing she had dreamed about in her own garden. Pierre, Annette's brother, had come rushing impetuously into the house that first day when he saw Marie enter it, and had