When the Duchess joined him in the garden walk that overlooked the sea, she gazed on her boy with secret pride. As he stood there in the sunshine, the light breeze playing in his hair, and in his eyes the dawn of joy and hope, he seemed to her mother’s heart a Prince Charming who had only to stretch out his hand and pluck the fairest flower in the garden of love.
Alistair found himself too much excited to remain at home waiting for the advent of the Princess. With a lover’s superstition he believed that the way to hasten her coming was to go out himself. He kissed his mother, and went down a rock-hewn stairway at the foot of which a wooden gate let him out on the sands.
The little Plage, enclosed between the two headlands which Dinard thrusts out into the sea like a snail’s horns, was bustling like a fair. The French had made a miniature village of the beach, with streets of little huts in which they read, and sewed, and called upon each other, and carried on their family life. Children were burrowing in the sand like rabbits, and bathers clad in the bright hues of butterflies fluttered on the sea’s edge.
“And I might live this life always!” Alistair murmured, with a sort of wonder at his own past blundering, as he stepped among this glad throng, as glad as they.
Hero came towards him, walking beside her father, dressed in white with one blue flower at her throat and a red flower in her heart.
“We were just coming to see you!” she cried gaily.
“I could not wait for you, you see!” cried Alistair.
And they two looked at each other through the magic casement of love.
CHAPTER XVI
NEW LAMPS FOR OLD
During the next few days a thing happened that surprised everyone. Sir Bernard Vanbrugh and Lord Alistair became great friends.