Mathilde went to Alaine and kissed her, then took the cold, thin hands in hers. “You are returned just in time, my dear. We have changed the tableaux somewhat, and will now rehearse the first one. Sit there, between Papa Louis and Mère Michelle. We call this The Return. It permits of two scenes. We shall want you for the second one, Alaine, dear Alaine. Draw the curtain, Gerard.”
The blue linen hangings parted, and Alaine saw before her, smiling a little, two men, one whose gray locks hung about a face somewhat older, somewhat more careworn, than she remembered it, but still the same that was her earliest memory. He rested his hand upon the shoulder of a younger man upon whose smooth cheek burned the mark of the red feather.
With parted lips and one cry, in which love, longing, and bewilderment were united, Alaine sprang to her feet, made one bound, and was clasped in her father’s arms.
“Drop the curtain, Gerard,” ordered Mathilde. “You have beheld the second scene, my friends. This tableau will not be repeated.”
An hour later the guests came trooping in, the Allaires and the Bonneaus, the Theroldes and the Thauvets. The news had spread abroad, and Mathilde’s tableaux proved to be less of an excitement than this drama in which the chief actors were Alaine and Theodore Hervieu and Lendert Verplanck.
It was late when the last tableau was announced. Surely it was a rose maiden who stood there in her gown of broidered pink, her short brown curls garlanded, and the bloom on her cheeks and lips that given by the touch of joy. So sweet and fair and slight she stood, and at her feet two little loves from out of the roses aimed their arrows. Around her glowed the flowers made by Mathilde’s cunning hands. At sight of her who had suffered much, who was lost and was found, who had mourned and had been mourned, who had been in perils oft, the whole company arose as if by an impulse, and burst out into a psalm of praise, singing so lustily that they might have been heard far in the quiet forest: “O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good!” And who in all that company could sing the words with more exalted soul than Alaine?
It was when one after another had tramped home and the snatches of song had died away that Mathilde, unable to curb her curiosity any longer, asked, “And Pierre?”
“And Pierre?” mocked Gerard, his arm around her. “My wife, you see, desires to know of him.”
Mathilde made a saucy face at him. “We desire to know of Pierre,” she repeated. “No doubt you have told his story over a dozen times this evening, but we have not heard, and we are not less friends than the rest, M. Hervieu.”
“Pierre.” M. Hervieu looked at Alaine and smiled. “Pierre is quite comfortable and in good hands. He is married.”