“Oh, but thou must.”
“Not at all; it is all a needless alarm. When I go I shall take another road, and shall go where I select. I have nothing to take me directly home, nor even to those my relatives. None will wonder at my delay. The good Mother Mercier has sent messages more than once by a safe hand, and they know I am faring well. I will not leave thee to-day, Alaine; I wish to say more, to hear more.”
“But I must not stay here so long; Mère Michelle will wonder, though she knows I am taking some of Gerard’s duties. Since he and Papa Louis are away, I must do more.”
“And I will help thee.”
“She would be shocked, that good mother, so shocked if she knew what I have been doing. I am a very wicked girl.”
He laughed softly. “Wicked is it to love?”
“No, but I should not have told it. Thou shouldst have gone to Papa Louis very properly, and I should have been surprised when he told me and have behaved with great decorum. Perhaps they would not have told me at all; they might have said, You cannot have her, M. Verplanck; she is to be betrothed to Gerard.”
“And then this hour would have been lost to us. We would never have lived it. Art sorry, Alaine, sorry that it was not as thou hast described? Art sorry, sweet Alaine?”
“No,” she confessed, “I am not, for, Lendert, I, too, have been learning to love ever since that moment when thou wast wounded in the wood.”
They stood looking into each other’s eyes, overcome by the remembrance of the fateful hour; then a cloud came over Alaine’s face; “Poor Pierre,” she murmured, as she moved away to finish the tasks left for her to do. Lendert kept by her side and was able to give her such aid that it was not long before she returned to Mère Michelle, who more than once had gone to the door to look after the delinquents.