The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (3.1894)

98 Apple Blossom in Brittany
in the tranquil custody of the priest and his sister, Marie-Ursule
had grown up.
Campion's share in her guardianship had not been onerous,
although it was necessarily maintained ; for the child had inherited,
and what small property would come to her was in England, and
in English funds. To Hortense Letetre and her brother such
responsibilities in an alien land were not for a moment to be
entertained. And gradually, this connection, at first formal and
impersonal, between Campion and the Breton presbytery, had
developed into an intimacy, into a friendship singularly satisfying
on both sides. Separate as their interests seemed, those of the
French country-priest, and of the Englishman of letters, famous
already in his own department, they had, nevertheless, much
community of feeling apart from their common affection for a
child. Now, for many years, he had been established in their
good graces, so that it had become an habit with him to spend his
holiday—it was often a very extended one—at Ploumariel ;
while to the Letetres, as well as to Marie-Ursule herself, this
annual sojourn of Campion's had become the occasion of the year,
the one event which pleasantly relieved the monotony of life in
this remote village ; though that, too, was a not unpleasant routine.
Insensibly Campion had come to find his chief pleasure in con-
sideration of this child of an old friend, whose gradual growth
beneath influences which seemed to him singularly exquisite and
fine, he had watched so long ; whose future, now that her child-
hood, her schooldays at the convent had come to an end, threatened
to occupy him with an anxiety more intimate than any which
hitherto he had known. Marie-Ursule's future ! They had
talked much of it that summer, the priest and the Englishman,
who accompanied him in his long morning walks, through green
lanes, and over white, dusty roads, and past fields perfumed with
the