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Déruchette awoke every morning with little thought of her actions of the day before . It would have troubled her a good deal to have had to give an account of how she had spent her time the previous week . All this , however , did not prevent her having certain hours of strange disquietude ; times when some dark cloud seemed to pass over the brightness of her joy . Those azure depths are subject to such shadows ! But clouds like these soon passed away . She quickly shook off such moods with a cheerful laugh , knowing neither why she had been sad , nor why she had regained her serenity . She was always at play . As a child , she would take delight in teasing the passers - by . She played practical jokes upon the boys . If the fiend himself had passed that way , she would hardly have spared him some ingenious trick . She was pretty and innocent ; and she could abuse the immunity accorded to such qualities . She was ready with a smile , as a cat with a stroke of her claws . So much the worse for the victim of her scratches . She thought no more of them . Yesterday had no existence for her . She lived in the fullness of to - day . Such it is to have too much happiness fall to one’s lot ! With Déruchette impressions vanished like the melted snow . BOOK IV THE BAGPIPE I STREAKS OF FIRE ON THE HORIZON Gilliatt had never spoken to Déruchette ; he knew her from having seen her at a distance , as men know the morning star . At the period when Déruchette had met Gilliatt on the road leading from St . Peter’s Port to Vale , and had surprised him by tracing his name in the snow , she was just sixteen years of age . Only the evening before Mess Lethierry had said to her , “ Come , no more childish tricks ; you are a great girl . ” That word “ Gilliatt , ” written by the young maiden , had sunk into an unfathomed depth . What were women to Gilliatt ? He could not have answered that question himself . When he met one he generally inspired her with something of the timidity which he felt himself . He never spoke to a woman except from urgent necessity . He had never played the part of a “ gallant ” to any one of the country girls . When he found himself alone on the road , and perceived a woman coming towards him , he would climb over a fence , or bury himself in some copse : he even avoided old women . Once in his life he had seen a Parisian lady . A Parisienne on the wing was a strange event in Guernsey at that distant epoch ; and Gilliatt had heard this gentle lady relate her little troubles in these words : “ I am very much annoyed ; I have got some spots of rain upon my bonnet . Pale buff is a shocking colour for rain . ” Having found , some time afterwards , between the leaves of a book , an old engraving , representing “ a lady of the Chaussée d’Antin ” in full dress , he had stuck it against the wall at home as a souvenir of this remarkable apparition .
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