‘You hold your life in your hand,’ whispered Marjorie, as they stepped noiselessly along. ‘Grandpapa is always astir by this hour. If he were to look through his window, you see, he might fire first and recognise you afterwards.’
‘Although you are my accomplice?’
‘He would be in the right, any way, according to old Norman law. What is a Seigneur worth if he may not use firearms at discretion? We should lodge the accident officially, au greffe, plead self-defence, if the case ever came to be heard, and pay an amende of a few hundred francs to the island poor.’
She gave a little shrug of her shoulders, which expressed that the subject was disposed of satisfactorily.
The broken pane, shrouded in green leaves, was conveniently near the casement bolt. Sufficient space existed for Marjorie’s slim hand to pass through the opening. There came a click as she slipped the bolt back in its setting, a slight groaning sound as Geoffrey Arbuthnot lifted the sash guardedly. Then the heiress of Tintajeux made good a somewhat undignified entrance into her own house, her tutor keeping watch for possible intruders outside.
Oh! the ice-cool sweetness of this Guernsey dairy, the air entering in free currents through gratings in either wall, the big pans filled with golden cream, the butter of yesterday’s churning standing, in tempting pats, upon the fair white shelves! Marjorie plunged a jug boldly into a pan of milk only set last night. It seemed—as she remembered Suzette, the fiery-tempered dairymaid—like a first plunge into crime. Conscience, however, as occurs in weightier matters than pillaging cream, hardened rapidly. To glide on tiptoe, from the dairy to the larder, to cut some solid trenches from a new-baked raisin loaf intended for the Seigneur’s lunch-table, was a minute’s work.
Then Miss Bartrand handed out her spoils to Geoffrey Arbuthnot. She cleared the window at a jump. The sash was stealthily closed, the boughs were pulled back into place, and away the pair walked, across the cedar-shadowed lawn, through the cool and dewy maze, to Arcadia.