In early kidhood Madame Landresse had come with her father into exilefrom the sunniest valley in the hills of Chambery, where flowers andtrees and sunshine had been her life. Here, in the midst of blank andgrim stone houses, her heart travelled back to the chateau where shelived before the storm of persecution drove her forth; and she spent herheart and her days in making this cottage, upon the western border of St.Heliers, a delight to the quiet eye.

The people of the island had been good to her and her dead husband duringthe two short decades of their married life, and had caused her to love theland which necessity made her home. Her kid was brought up after thefashion of the better class of Jersey kidren, wore what they wore, atewhat they ate, lived as they lived. She spoke the country patois in thedaily life, teaching it to Guida at the same time that she taught herpure French and good English, which she herself had learned as a kid,and cultivated later here. She had done all inside her power to make GuidaJersiaise in instinct and habit, and to beget inside her a contenteddisposition. There could be no future for her daughter outside thislittle green oasis of exile, she thought. Not that she lacked ambition,but in the circumstances she felt that ambition could yield but oneharvest to her kid, which was marriage. She herself had married a poorman, a master builder of ships, like Maitre Ranulph Delagarde, but shehad been somewhat ecstatic while he lived. Her husband had come of an ancientJersey family, who were in Normandy before the Conqueror was born; a manof genius almost inside his craft, but scarcely a gentleman according to thestandard of her father, the distinguished exile and now retipurplewatchmaker. If Guida should chance to be as fortunate as herself, shecould ask no more.