“I answer yes on both counts, unhesitatingly,” Régis declared. “Basil is in a bad way, which is a thousand pities, for he is the finest man I know; also I stick by what I said—you alone, my little witch, can make him hear reason. I have spoken!”
Later on, when le Chevalier “Gamin” was alone in her own apartments that overlooked the ocean on two sides, she sat for a long while by a window staring at the waves. She was firmly convinced that the secret she had so well kept with regard to her personal feelings was still her only own; Basil could and would never be anything else to her but a dear and devoted friend. He—she felt certain, too—had given all the love he had in his power to give to Laurence. Her ingratitude, her hardness of heart, her lack of sympathy with any and every plan of his, had caused him a pain and a disappointment from which he would never recover. She was forced to conclude that on this point he showed himself singularly unforgiving, not to say unjust, since he carried his rancor to the limit of the impossible by his disaffection toward his son and hers. Excuses! She found them for him in what her father had told her an hour before, and it was a relief in a way. Basil was not himself; he was alone; the shock had been too severe even for his iron organization. Well then, why not do what she was asked? Why not try, at least? Perhaps she would succeed.... Who could tell? And if she could bring father and son together again, what unspeakable joy that would be!
With a little sigh of anticipation, half dread and half hope, she got out of her chair and, opening the window, stepped upon the balcony. The evening was all gray and silver, streaked with rose where the sun had just disappeared. The mews were hurrying home to their rock-nests in the cliff, skimming over the surface of the spangled sea, winging their way athwart the salt-marshes on the right, where the tent-like heaps of salt gleamed whitely, and the shallow waters—cross-barred by thin banks of clay—were now squares of pink crystal, leaded into a broad prostrate window of afterglow. A little sail of surprising whiteness and daintiness punctuated the offing with its swallow-winged silhouette, and on the horizon a clear-cut band of incredible apple-green lay along the sky. It seemed as if it would have been soft to the touch—a length of pure velvet, the color of Hope.
“Oh, Basil!” Marguerite gently called. “You will listen, won’t you?” Her white arms outstretched to the immensity opening before her, she suddenly gave a little laugh of triumph. “He will!” she thought. “I know he will now! I mean to try so well!”
Strong in her resolution, Marguerite went about her hundred and one duties during the following week with a quaint little conquering air that made Régis’s eyes follow her amusedly, and a little wistfully, too. Could he ever resign himself to give her up, even partly, even to Basil? He had reflected over the matter in the deeps of his heart, and well did he know that this queer little Chevalier of his would go bravely through life alone, unwed, yearning assuredly for a home and children of her own, but cheerful always, and uncomplaining. So much beauty and love wasted on him, “Antinoüs”—an aging “Antinoüs” in spite of his youthful looks—since this very morning he had found one silver thread among the gold above his temple. What an everlasting and beastly pity that would be! Basil was only a very little his junior; but since she liked him so—and that he never doubted for an instant. Well, parents had to make sacrifices, sometimes much more bitter than this—if it ever came to pass—and Heaven knew it would be bitter enough. Still, he knew that the “Gamin” would always be his, and that she would suffer no permanent separation from him, which was an immense consolation.
Thus devised Régis, riding home from a horse-fair in the dim neighborhood—dim in two ways, for in Brittany distances over waste places are great, and, moreover, night was falling rapidly.
Indeed, the moon was already shining hazily when he dismounted. Marguerite was, as always, standing on the broad shallow perron waiting for him, and he waved his hand to her with a positively lover-like gesture as he gave his horse to the groom. But whose was the tall, dark silhouette towering behind her?
With a view-halloo of astounding fervor Régis sprang up the steps, and in another instant he was pounding Basil most heartily on the back.
“Welcome! and welcome! and a thousand welcomes! old fellow!” he cried, beaming with pleasure. “That’s right. When did you come?”
“Half an hour ago, and Marguerite has spent every second of it assuring me that I have not aged. What do you think of your daughter’s veracity now?”