It was very quiet. There was not a creature stirring, and the warm July sunshine lay languidly on some deserted chairs about a table on the lawn.
Bidiane went slowly up to the hall door and rang the bell.
Rosy-cheeked Célina soon stood before her; and smiling a welcome, for she knew very well who the visitor was, she gently opened the door of a long, narrow blue and white room on the right side of the hall.
Bidiane paused on the threshold. This dainty, exquisite apartment, furnished so simply, and yet so elegantly, had not been planned by an architect or furnished by a decorator of the Bay. This bric-à-brac, too, was not Acadien, but Parisian. Ah, how much Mr. Nimmo loved Rose à Charlitte! and she drew a long breath and gazed with girlish and fascinated awe at the tall, beautiful woman who rose from a low seat, and slowly approached her.
Rose was about to address her, but Bidiane put up a protesting hand. "Don't speak to me for a minute," she said, breathlessly. "I want to look at you."
Rose smiled indulgently, and Bidiane gazed on. She felt herself to be a dove, a messenger sent from a faithful lover to the woman he worshipped. What a high and holy mission was hers! She trembled blissfully, then, one by one, she examined the features of this Acadien beauty, whose quiet life had kept her from fading or withering in the slightest degree. She was, indeed, "a rose of dawn."
These were the words written below the large painting of her that hung in Mr. Nimmo's room. She must tell Rose about it, although of course the picture and the inscription must be perfectly familiar to her, through Mr. Nimmo's descriptions.
"Madame de Forêt," she said at last, "it is really you. Oh, how I have longed to see you! I could scarcely wait."
"Won't you sit down?" said her hostess, just a trifle shyly.
Bidiane dropped into a chair. "I have teased Mrs. Nimmo with questions. I have said again and again, 'What is she like?'—but I never could tell from what she said. I had only the picture to go by."