"You shall have a share of mine!"
"I've made sure of my share already. It made the ache easier just to be with her, and so I went often to Belfontaine, and she never failed me. She was always full of hope and confidence. 'He will come back to us, my dear,' she would say. 'And when we get him back we must try to keep him, though that is not easy in Sercq.'"
"But you know why I went, Carette."
"Don't go again, Phil. It is very hard on the women to have their men-folk go. All the fear and the heartache are ours."
"But it is for you we go—to win what we can for you."
"Ah, what is it all worth?—Just nothing at all. It's not what you bring in your hands, but what is in your hearts for us, Phil. Better a cottage on Sercq with our hearts together like this,"—and I could feel her sweet heart beating through as she nestled up against me with my right arm round her neck,—than all the plunder of Herm."
"Then I will never leave you again, my sweet," and I sealed that pledge in kisses. "But how we are to live—"
"Aunt Jeanne will tell you, and I will tell you now. We are to live at Beaumanoir. She says she is getting too old for the fanning, and must have help, and so—"
"So you have arranged it all among you, though for all you knew it was a dead man you were planning for."
"It kept our hearts alive to plan it, and, besides, we knew you were not dead. I think we would have felt it if you had been."