Mathilde’s fingers flew back and forth as she sewed some strips together. “And you were once such a happy girl, Alaine. If Pierre should return in time you might find happiness with him, he is so good and true. See how dark it looked to me at one time.”
“Pierre?”
“Yes. Gerard has told me why he went.”
Alaine let her hands lie idle in her lap for a moment and looked mournfully out of the window. The year was past, but there was no Pierre to claim her, and no Lendert to step in between her and duty. “In what strange ways are our doings ordered,” she said, gravely. “We mourn and sigh and fret over the difficulties in our pathway, and before we know it some convulsion of nature has removed them and we walk for evermore through a twilight world in which no stumbling is possible. With the danger we lose the light.”
“Yes, but there is the morning still to come,” returned Mathilde, cheerily. “Here comes Mère Michelle; I will leave you for a little, I have forgotten something that I should have brought from my uncle’s. We shall need it for our tableaux to-night.”
It was a full hour before she returned all in a flutter. She sought Mère Michelle. There were whispers, chatterings, screams of astonishment, falling almost without notice upon Alaine’s dull ears. Mathilde did love surprises; she had some new scheme afoot for the night’s entertainment. But the girl did arouse to a sense of more important things being in prospect when Michelle, with much mystery, came and clasped her in her arms.
“Prepare yourself, my Alainette; this day will have a happy ending for you. Sorrow endureth for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
“What is it? What is it?” Alaine asked, faintly.
“We have heard from Pierre.”
“Ah-h!” Alaine started. “He is coming?”