| “When the lamp is shattered, The light in the dust lies dead; When the cloud is scattered, The rainbow’s glory is fled.” |
Mercifully, youth has this marvellous elasticity. And the children filled all the vacant places in her life. For as yet she did not think much nor at all decidedly about Tris. If Roland was slipping away from memory, Tris by no means filled her heart. Yet she was pleased when Ann Trewillow’s little maid Gillian told her one morning:
“Master Arundel’s yacht be come into harbour safe and sound, and Captain Tris, he be brave and hearty, and busy all to get ashore again. And my mother do say Mr. Arundel he be going to marry a fine lady, and great doings at the Abbey, no doubt. And mother do say, too, that Captain Tris will be marrying you. And I was a brave bit frightened at that news, and I up and answered mother: ‘It bean’t so. Miss Denas likes better teaching us boys and girls.’ I said that, and wishing it so with all my heart.”
And Denas, seeing that the boys and girls were looking anxiously at her for an assurance of this position, said positively:
“I am happier with you, children, than I could be 329 with anyone else, and I do not intend to marry at all.”
“Never? Say never!”
“Well, then––never.”
Yet there was a faint longing in her heart for love all her own. A man can love what others love, but a woman wants something or someone to love that is all her own. And she was interested enough in Tris’ return to dress with more than usual care that evening. She felt sure he would come, and she put on her best black gown and did not brush the ripples out of her front hair, but let the tiny tendrils soften the austere gravity of her face and make that slight shadow behind the ears which is so womanly and becoming.
About seven o’clock she heard his footsteps on the shingle and the gay whistle to which they timed themselves. Joan went to the door to welcome him. Denas stood up as he entered, and then, meeting his ardent gaze, trembled and flushed and sat down again. He sat down beside her. He told her how much already he had heard of her gracious work in the village. He said it was worth going to France and Italy and Greece, only to come back and see how much more lovely than all other women the Cornish women were. And by and by he took from his pocket the most exquisite kerchief of Maltese lace and a finely-carved set of corals. Denas would have been less than a woman had she not been charmed with the beautiful objects. She let Tris knot the lovely silky lace around her throat, and she went to her mirror and put the carved coral 330 comb among her fair, abundant tresses, and the rings in her ears, and the necklace and the locket round her white slender throat.
Then Tris looked at her as if he had met a goddess in a wilderness; and Joan, with her hands against her sides, congratulated and praised herself for having given to St. Penfer by the Sea a daughter so lovely and so good.