Mademoiselle Thérèse showing signs of weeping again, Barbara hastened to comfort her, assuring her that she would never again go out alone to see St. Michel from that side, which she thought was a perfectly safe promise to make. But her companion shook her head mournfully, declaring that it would be a very long time before she brought any of her pupils to Mont St. Michel again.
"They might really get caught next time," she said, and Barbara knew it was no good to point out that probably there would never be another pupil who was quite so silly as she had been.
"Nevertheless," the girl said to herself, looking back at the grand, gray pile from the train, "except for the fright I gave them, it was worth it all—worth it all, dear St. Michel, to see you from out there." And Jean, looking pensively out of the window, was thinking that since it was safely over, the adventure was one which any youth might be proud to tell to his companions, and which few were fortunate or brave enough to have experienced.
CHAPTER IX.
MADEMOISELLE VIRÉ.
"The Loirés' chief virtues are their friends," Barbara had written home, and it was always a surprise to her to find that they knew so many nice people. A few days after the adventurous visit to Mont St. Michel she made the acquaintance of one whom she learned to love dearly, and about whom there hung a halo of romance that charmed the girl.
"Her story is known to me," Mademoiselle Thérèse explained on the way to her house, "and I will tell it you—in confidence, of course." She paused a moment to impress Barbara and to arrange her thoughts, for she dearly loved a romantic tale, and would add garnishing by the way if she did not consider it had enough.
"She is the daughter of a professor," she began presently. "They used to live in Rouen—gray, beautiful, many-churched Rouen." The lady glanced sideways at her companion to see if her rhetoric were impressive enough, and Barbara waited gravely for her to continue, though wondering if mademoiselle had ever read The Lady of Shalott.
"An officer in one of the regiments stationed in the quaint old town," pursued mademoiselle, "saw the professor's fair young daughter, and fell rapturously in love with her. Whereupon they became betrothed."