Pierre rescues her, and when Fifine has been for some years in service with the repentant Pierre's cousin her improved looks and clothing make her unrecognisable to the thick-headed well-meaning young farmer.
The only fault that can be found with these chronicles of Manneville is the likeness between them. The "Miller of Manneville," in the "Forget-me-not" collection, is full of charm, but it too much resembles "By the Well." The "Story of Monique" gives, however, a happy variety, and Monique is a thorough French girl; so is Mimi in the bright little story called "Mimi's Sin." Angélique again, in "Clément's Love," is a girl one meets with over and over again in Normandy, but these Norman stories are all so exquisitely told that it is invidious to single out favourites.
The stories laid in England, in which the characters are English, are less graphic; they lack the fresh and true atmosphere of their fellows placed across the Channel.
Julia Kavanagh died at Nice, where she spent the last few years of her life. Had she lived longer she would perhaps have given us some graphic stories from the Riviera, for it is evident that foreign people and foreign ways attracted her sympathies so powerfully that she was able to reproduce them in their own atmosphere. In a brief but touching preface to the collection called "Forget-me-nots," published after her death, Mr. C. W. Wood gives us a lovable glimpse of this charming writer; reading this interesting little sketch deepens regret that one had not the privilege of personally knowing so sweet a woman.
In regard to truth of atmosphere in her foreign stories, Julia Kavanagh certainly surpasses Amelia B. Edwards. In "Barbara's History," in "Lord Brackenbury," and in other stories by Miss Edwards, there are beautiful and graphic descriptions of foreign scenery, and we meet plenty of foreign people; but we feel that the latter are described by an Englishwoman who has taken an immense amount of pains to make herself acquainted with their ways and their speech—they somewhat lack spontaneity. In the two novels named there are chapters so full of local history and association that one thinks it might be well to have the books for companions when visiting the places described; they are full of talent—in some places near akin to genius.
"Barbara's History" contains a great deal of genuine humour. It is a most interesting and exciting story, though in parts stagey; the opening chapters, indeed the whole of Barbara's stay at her great-aunt's farm of Stoneycroft, are so excellent that one cannot wonder the book was a great success. Now and again passages and characters remind one of Dickens; the great-aunt, Mrs. Sandyshaft, is a thorough Dickens woman, with a touch of the great master's exaggeration; Barbara's father is another Dickens character. There are power and passion as well as humour in this book, but in spite of its interest it becomes fatiguing when Barbara leaves her aunt and the hundred pigs.
There is remarkable truth of characterisation in some of this writer's novels. Hugh Farquhar is sometimes an eccentric bore, but he is real. Barbara Churchill at times is wearyingly pedantic; then, again, she is just as delightfully original—her first meeting with Mrs. Sandyshaft is so inimitable that I must transcribe a part of it.
A rich old aunt has invited Barbara Churchill, a neglected child of ten years old, to stay with her in Suffolk. Barbara is the youngest of Mr. Churchill's three girls, and she is not loved by either her widowed father or her sisters, though an old servant named Goody dotes on the child. Barbara is sent by stage-coach from London to Ipswich:—
"Dashing on between the straggling cottages, and up a hill so closely shaded by thick trees that the dusk seems to thicken suddenly to-night, we draw up all at once before a great open gate, leading to a house of which I can only see the gabled outline and the lighted windows.