'No, child; not tonight,' I said decidedly. 'The wind is violent, and the cliff doubly slippery after this ice-storm. Go round through the village.'
'Of course we shall go through the village,' said our surgeon, in his calm authoritative way. They started. But in another minute I saw Jeannette fly by the west window, over the wall and across the snowy road, like a spirit, disappearing down the steep bank, now slippery with glare ice. Another minute, and Rodney Prescott followed in her track.
With bated breath I watched for the reappearance of the two figures on the white plain, one hundred and fifty feet below; the cliff was difficult at any time, and now in this ice! The moments seemed very long, and, alarmed, I was on the point of arousing the garrison, when I spied the two dark figures on the snowy plain below, now clear in the moonlight, now lost in the shadow. I watched them for some distance; then a cloud came, and I lost them entirely.
Rodney did not return, although I sat late before the dying fire. Thinking over the evening, the idea came to me that perhaps, after all, he did admire my protegee, and, being a romantic old woman, I did not repel the fancy; it might go a certain distance without harm, and an idyl is always charming, doubly so to people cast away on a desert island. One falls into the habit of studying persons very closely in the limited circle of garrison life.
But, the next morning, the major's wife gave me an account of the sociable. 'It was very pleasant,' she said. 'Toward the last Dr. Prescott came in, quite unexpectedly. I had no idea he could be so agreeable. Augusta can tell you how charming he was!'
Augusta, a young lady cousin, of pale blond complexion, neutral opinions, and irreproachable manners, smiled primly. My idyl was crushed!
The days passed. The winds, the snows, and the high-up fort remained the same. Jeannette came and went, and the hour lengthened into two or three; not that we read much, but we talked more. Our surgeon did not again pass through the parlor; he had ordered a rickety stairway on the outside wall to be repaired, and we could hear him going up and down its icy steps as we sat by the hearth-fire. One day I said to him, 'My protegee is improving wonderfully. If she could have a complete education, she might take her place with the best in the land.'
'Do not deceive yourself, Mrs. Corlyne,' he answered. 'It is only the shallow French quickness.'
'Why do you always judge the child so harshly, Doctor?'
'Do you take her part, Aunt Sarah?' (For sometimes he used the title which Archie had made so familiar.)