“God grant it!”
But she was not quite sure whether the sound came from the old picture hall, or was just the echo of the wish that had risen from her heart.
Outside she met Ameyric, and he escorted her home. He spoke again of his love, and she was no longer impatient to hear him talk. She was intensely sorry for him. If he had the same pain in his heart that she had, then he was immensely to be pitied: and if it lay in her power to make one man happy, then surely it was her duty to do so.
But she would make no definite promise.
“Let us wait until the spring,” she said, in answer to an earnest appeal from him for a quick decision.
“Orange-blossom time?” he asked.
“Perhaps,” she replied.
And with this half-promise he had perforce to be satisfied.
CHAPTER X
WOMAN TO WOMAN
It was fourteen days after the New Year. Snow had fallen, and the mistral had blown for forty-eight hours unmercifully down the valley. News from Paris had been scanty, but such as they were, they were reassuring. A courier had come over all the way from Paris on New Year’s eve, with a letter from Bertrand, giving a few details of the proposed arrangements for Madame de Mont-Pahon’s funeral, which was to take place on the feast of the Holy Innocents. The letter had been written on the day following her death, which had come as a great shock to everybody, even though she had been constantly ailing of late. Directly after the funeral, he, Bertrand, would set off for home in the company of M. de Peyron-Bompar, Rixende’s father, who desired to talk over the new arrangements that would have to be made for his daughter’s marriage. The wedding would of course have to be postponed for a few months, but there was no reason why it should not take place before the end of the summer, and as Rixende no longer had a home now in Paris, the ceremonies could well taken place in Bertrand’s old home.