"Miss him?" retorted the man with a savage oath. "Ever since he killed Hare-Lip and Mole-Skin last November not a hundred mètres from this very spot, I have prayed that a bullet from my musket might lay him low."
The girl said nothing more. The man grasped his musket more firmly and cowered into the thicket, and she turned and went back towards the cross roads.
At this very moment a man was walking rapidly towards the same cross roads, but from the opposite direction. He, too, held his cloak wrapped closely up to his chin, for the air was cold. But soon he paused, threw back his mantle and unfolded a scrap of paper he had been holding tightly squeezed in his hand. Once again he read the lines which were so familiar to him, and when he had finished reading he pressed the precious scrap of paper once or twice to his lips. Then he continued on his way.
Some time before he reached the cross roads, he saw Constance de Plélan coming towards him. A moment or two later he was by her side, confused and shy, hardly able to speak owing to the overwhelming sense of happiness.
He tried to take her in his arms, but she evaded him, slipping away from him like a mischievous elf of the woods.
"Let us walk a little," she said.
He was ready to do anything she wished. His calm, reserved demeanour appeared in strange contrast to her exuberant vitality. He hardly could believe in the reality of this supreme moment, and he moved along beside her like a sleepwalker in a dream. He tried to lead the way towards the cross roads.
"There is a side-track there," he said, "sheltered against the wind and carpeted with moss. We should be more lonely there."
But she demurred and, with a laugh, clung to his arm and made him turn back towards the city. She talked at random, almost wildly, about irrelevant things, whilst he wished to speak of nothing but of his love for her—born on that afternoon when she had sung to him and with her own white hands had given him the tin box. The papers it contained were worthless, perhaps; but he had been deeply moved by her trust in him and his admiration had quickened into love. Since then he had dreamed of the happy time when she would trust him more fully and allow him to walk by her side and to sit with her, untrammelled by the presence of strangers. Hitherto she had been very shy and reticent, though at times she met him in the town when she was up for a day's shopping or to see her friends. Once or twice she had sent him a treasured little note, telling him that she would be going to church alone.
These had been happy times, and his love had grown in intensity with every meeting. But still he longed to have her all to himself. Timidly he ventured to suggest a walk in the woods or in the park of the château. And this morning the measure of his happiness appeared complete. She sent him word that she would walk in the woods as far as the cross roads close to the château, and would meet him there in the late afternoon. He was too unsophisticated and unversed in the usages of Society to marvel at Mademoiselle de Plélan's agreeing to a clandestine meeting with a man far beneath her in station and at an hour when only flirts were wont to walk abroad. He was far too infatuated by this time to see in this unconventional act aught but graciousness on her part.