The Chevalier's daughter

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

"I do not know, I am sure," I said. "I love to hear and read them. But what is that?" I asked, with a start, as the near church bell swung round and then rang out loudly. "Is it an alarm?"

"That is the church bell," said Paulina, with a little laugh. "How you start at everything. I noticed it when my father was reading."

"If you had been through what she has, you would start too," said Eleanor, speaking for the first time. "Can't you understand that, Paul? Will you go to church, cousin?"

"I don't believe she ought to go," said Katherine; "she looks so tired and overwrought."

"I would much rather go, if maman is willing," said I.

There was some demur among the elders, but it was finally settled that I might do as I pleased, and I presently found myself walking with my cousins through a shady lane which led from the rectory to the church. Once inside the gates, we found ourselves amid a throng of people, all well-dressed and comfortable-looking, and, as it seemed, all talking together in an odd kind of patois which was not English, and not any French that I was used to. However, by a little attention I understood the tongue well enough, and I found it not so very different from the Norman French spoken in La Manche.

There were a good many English people in church, and some whom I guessed to be French exiles, like ourselves. I saw Pierre Le Febre seated along with a decent-looking family of fisher-folks, and as I glanced at him from time to time, I saw him listening with the greatest attention and an air of profound amazement, not to say alarm, which made me smile. The prayers and sermon were in the language of the island, but, as Katherine told me, the afternoon service was always in English.

I was still listening, as I thought, to my cousin's sermon, when to my great amazement, I found myself in my little blue and white bed. It was toward evening, as I guessed by the light. My mother was bending over me, and Cousin Marianne with a strange gentleman were standing on the other side of the bed.

"There is a great improvement, madame," the stranger said in English. "I think I may say that with care there is nothing more to fear. But I cannot too strongly recommend absolute quiet and silence for the present."

"What does it mean, maman?" I said, finding my voice somehow very hard to get at, and very thin and tremulous when found. "I thought I was in church. Have I been ill?"