Jill, pale and silent, had passed among the people, and wherever she was seen, with her stricken face, Marthe Ludérac was remembered. She had visited the curé when the body was recovered and made all arrangements for the funeral; she sat with the mayor and supervised the disposal of Marthe's small fortune. She was at the Manoir day and night, tending the old woman desperately dying there. Her authority was undisputed. A sense of mysterious significance and grief surrounded the dead girl with an aura. Then, when at last Graham could travel, he and she had gone, and for two years Buissac heard no more of them. But Marthe Ludérac was not forgotten. Her legend grew quietly, insistently, as lilies-of-the-valley grow underground; running ever further and throwing up at each new season fresh shoots and flowers. Excitement, elation, was felt in Buissac when it was known that Madame Graham had returned to erect a monument to her; but no surprise. She was already a presence among them.
In the cemetery, half a mile below, there were now three graves under the chestnut branches. A solitary wreath of daffodils had been laid on Madame de Lamouderie's; but Marthe Ludérac's was heaped with tinsel flowers, bead wreaths, and sacred ornaments and looked at last in keeping, it was felt, with the rest of the fine Buissac necropolis. Madame Michon might have pronounced it almost coquet when, with the others, she came to-day to lay upon it her own splendid offering, bristling with porcelain scrolls and inscriptions.
