“Nothing, except that my horse is chafing at the gates because I ought to have been gone an hour ago.”
Andrea assumed a calm face and said in a tone too firm not to be affectation:
“God save you, brother!”
She watched him mount his horse and ride off, waving his hand to the last. She remained motionless as long as he was in sight.
Then she turned and ran at hazard in the wood like a wounded fawn, until she dropped on a bench under the trees where she let a sob burst from her bosom.
“Oh, Father of the motherless,” she exclaimed, “why am I left all alone upon earth?”
A slight sound in the thicket—a sigh, she took it to be, made her turn. She was startled to see a sad face rise before her. It was Gilbert’s, as pale and cast-down as her own.
At sight of a man, though he was not a stranger, Andrea hastened to dry her eyes, too proud to show her grief to another. She composed her features and smoothed her cheeks which had been quivering with despair.
Gilbert was longer than she in regaining his calm, and his countenance was still mournful when she looked on it.
“Ah, Master Gilbert again,” she said, with the light tone she always assumed when chance brought her and the young man together. “But what ails you that you should gaze on me with that dolorous air? Something must have saddened you—pray, what has saddened you?”