‘Je crois, Joséphine, que c’est le docteur’—and then stopped, and drew her hand slowly across her eyes, like one awakened from a moment’s stupor. ‘C’est Monsieur le docteur qui nous arrive enfin,’ she added, in her usual voice, and with a full return to her old self.
Joséphine peered over the balustrade, but she only saw three moving shapes upon the bridge, the outlines of horse and man intermelted to her vision.
‘The foremost rider must now be half way up the street,’ cried Mademoiselle’s companion, glad yet ashamed that she should be there at such a moment.
‘Take Gabrielle, Joséphine, and put on her pretty grey dress and her laces. Marie will open the door for Dr. Vermont.’
Joséphine carried off the startled child, too frightened to ask questions or demur, and at that moment the bell rang loudly, with violent emphasis.
‘I will leave you now, dear Mademoiselle,’ said her friend, with sympathetic pressure of her fingers. ‘Monsieur will doubtless require this appartement, in which case I can return to Beaufort this evening.’
‘No, no, there is a bedroom upstairs. You will not leave me so abruptly, not now, when perhaps I may most need a friend. Stay yet a while.’
A heavy step was crossing the hall, and came through the dining-room towards the gallery. The foreigner, on her way to her own room, caught sight of a lean, youngish-looking gentleman, with a fair beard and thin brown hair worn off temples, deeply marked by life. He glanced at her keenly, as he stood for her to pass, and she had time to note the social polish of his manners, and the melancholy dignity of his aspect, and then he crossed the floor and stepped out through the window, searching with mild brown eyes for the woman who had waited for his coming for ten long years.
His face lit up with a soft smile when he saw her, and he went forward, upon the pleasant exclamation—‘Ma sœur!’ His intention was to bestow upon her a formal embrace. His hand was stretched out, and when her cold slim fingers touched it, and lay in his palm, and he saw the lustre of unshed tears in the sad grey eyes that met his own steadily, and a rosy flame tremble like confession over the cheeks’ pallor, a new impulse came to him, and he simply lifted her hand to his lips.
‘Henriette,’ he murmured, in a troubled voice.