Meanwhile, Adèle had reached the cottage, just in time to stop Arthur and the old nurse from starting on another fruitless search.
As the horse with its double burden paced along the road, she and her cousin, their arms lovingly intertwined, stood at the gate of the cottage-garden waiting for its approach out of the shadows. They were together and alone—Nurse Martha and the landlady being busy indoors, making everything ready in Margaret's room, for the young girl had told her tale of horrors, and they feared it would be impossible for Margaret to survive so much.
But Adèle had seen her calm face, and she answered the doleful prophecies of the nurses by a smile: "You'll see, nurse; our Margaret will soon be better now."
They had been extremely anxious to seize the young girl, after her breathless entry and thrilling tale, and put her to bed as an invalid, but Adèle decidedly refused submission. The sight of Arthur was like a tonic to her trembling nerves. She would only allow her poor little wet feet to be dried and warmed by the parlor fire, close to which the children were still sleeping, and her wet clothes to be changed. As to shutting herself out from Arthur when she had just found him, it was simply cruel to ask it.
She was the heroine of the moment, for although her own tale had barely done justice to the self-forgetfulness with which that terrible struggle had been conducted, they yet heard enough to know that in her faithful devotion she had risked her own life, and Arthur, the old woman, the landlady looked upon the young girl with a new respect.
"What did you think of, Adèle," asked her cousin as, wrapped up warmly, she stood clinging to him by the garden-gate—"what did you think of when that ugly wave was so close to you?" Doubtless, Arthur knew what the answer would be. Of course the heroine had thought about her hero. How could it possibly have been otherwise?
"Dear," she replied softly, and the ready tears flowed down her cheeks, "I thought of you, and how miserable and lonely you would be. Margaret gone, and—and—"
"My Adèle gone," he said very softly, filling up the pause.
And then—ah yes—and then all kinds of foolish things no doubt were said and done, for these young people were, as it will be seen, very young, and what is more very much in love; and as we all know the kind of things, perhaps it is scarcely necessary to put them down in black and white.