It said:
I think by summer we can bring everything to a satisfactory conclusion. I can take no definite steps at present because Mrs. Norval's lawyer writes that she has been quite ill and has gone to the mountains to recuperate.
Norval frowned, he was getting impatient of delay, he wanted to take Donelle to Egypt in the early summer. He wanted Law to set his seal of approbation upon her.
But Donelle saw no reason for perplexity; she existed in so glorious a state that no disturbing thing ever entered. It was enough for her to waken in the morning and to know that her love was in Jo's upper chamber, safe and near. It was joy for her to look at Jo herself and think that the world could no longer hurt her. How could it, with the big love holding them all?
When Norval touched her, Donelle felt the thrill of trust and understanding. She never doubted now and often she would laugh as she remembered her vow by the cross and thought of St. Michael's-on-the-Rocks.
"Oh! but it is the magic that has caught me!" she whispered to herself, hugging her slim body and wishing, with happy tears, that all the world, her little world, could know.
She wanted Jo to know, and Tom Gavot! She couldn't bear to have Tom nursing a hate while he was away making his roads. She wanted everyone in Point of Pines to know, even old Pierre.
She wished, almost pathetically, that Mrs. Lindsay and Professor Revelle could know.
"For they made me just a little more like my dear love," She said to herself. "They brightened me and gave me the music. My dear loves me to be pretty and he loves my music."
But it was not all so easy for Norval. There were times when, alone with Donelle in the wood-cabin, the crude side of love made its tremendous claim.