“I suppose you are bad enough to hope that I will fail,” added she presently, with a little moue.
“Yvonne,” said Rex earnestly, “I hope that you will succeed. I know you will, and I can wait for you a few weeks more.”
“We have waited for our happiness two years. We will make the happiness of others now first, n’est ce pas?” she whispered.
The sky began to glow and the house was astir. Rex knew how it would soon be talking, but he cared for nothing that the world could do or say.
“Ah! we will be happy! Think of it! A little house near the Parc Monceau, my studio there, Clifford, Elliott, Rowden—Bra—- all of them coming again! And it will be my wife who will receive them!”
She placed a little soft palm across his lips.
“Taisez-vous, mon ami! It is too soon! See the morning! I must go. There! yes—one more!—my love, Adieu!”
CHAPTER XVI.
Fewer tourists and more hunters had been coming to the Lodge of late; the crack of the rifle sounded all day. There was great talk of a hunt which the duke would hold in September, and the colonel and Rex were invited. But though September was now only a few days off, the colonel was growing too restless to wait.
After Yvonne’s visit, he and Ruth were much together. It seemed to happen so. They took long walks into the woods, but Ruth seemed to share now her father’s aversion to climbing, and Gethryn stalked the deer with only the Jaegers for company.