"No, destiny set it!" put in Mrs. Galland.
Lanstron dropped down beside Marta's chair.
"Yes, destiny set it," he said, imploringly.
"Just as it set your part for you. And, Marta," Mrs. Galland went on gently, with what Marta had once called the wisdom of mothers, "Lanny lives and lives for you. Your destiny is life and to make the most of life, as you always have. Isn't it, Marta?"
"Yes," she breathed after a pause, in conviction, as she pressed her mother's hands. "Yes, you have a gift of making things simple and clear."
Then she looked up to Lanstron and the flame in her eyes, whose leaping, spontaneous passion he already knew, held something of the eternal, as her arms crept around his neck.
"You are life, Lanny! You are the destiny of to-day and to-morrow!"
Though it was very late autumn now, such was the warmth of the sun that, with a wrap, Mrs. Galland was sitting on the veranda. She was content—too content to go to town. As she had said to Marta, no doubt it would be a wonderful sight, but she had never cared for public celebrations since she had lost her husband. She could get all the joys of peace she wanted looking at the garden and the landscape; and it did not matter at all now if Marta were twenty-seven, or even if she were thirty or thirty odd.
For the last week the people of La Tir had been returning to their homes, and with the early morning those from the country districts had come swarming in for the great day. Faintly she heard the cheers of the crowds pouring toward the frontier—cheers for the Gray premier and cheers for Lanstron and for Turcas as they gathered for a purpose which looked further ahead than the mere ratification of the very simple terms of peace that left the white posts where they were before the war.