“I have it!” said he blithely, and strode off down the path between the apple-trees, his fine shoulders held squarely, and a confidence in all his bearing. But a wave of pity for him, and strange tenderness, went over me in that moment, for in that moment I felt an assurance that I should win.
It was an assurance doomed to swift ruin. It was an assurance destined soon to be hidden under such a vast wreckage of my hopes that even memory marvelled when she dragged it forth to light.
Chapter VIII
The Moon in the Apple-bough
During all our conversation we had stood in plain view of the windows, so that our friendly parting must have been visible to all the house. On my return within doors I found Yvonne walking up and down in a graceful impatience, her black lace shawl thrown lightly about her head.
“If you want to,” said she, “you may come out on the porch with me for a little while, monsieur. I want you to talk to me.”
“Yvonne,” exclaimed her mother, in a rebuking voice, “will not this room do as well?”
“No, indeed, little mamma,” said she wilfully. “Nothing will do as well as the porch, where the moonlight is, and the smell of the apple-blossoms. You know, dear, Grand Pré is not Paris!”
“Nor yet is it Quebec,” said I pointedly.
Monsieur de Lamourie smiled. Whatever Yvonne would was in his eyes good. But her mother yielded only with a little gesture of protest.
“Yvonne is always a law unto herself,” she murmured.