They had achieved Yvonne.

Many a time had I wondered how my cousin Marc could have had eyes for his ruddy-haired Puritan lily when there was Yvonne de Lamourie in the world. On my last two visits to Grand Pré I had seen her; not many times, indeed, nor much alone; and never word of love had passed between us. In truth, I had not known that I loved her in those days. I had taken a wondering delight in her beauty and her wit, but of the pretty trifles of compliment and the careless gallantries that so often simulate love I had offered her none at all. This surprised me the more afterward, as women had ever found me somewhat lavish in such light coin. I think I was withheld by the great love unrealized in my heart, which found expression then only in such white reverence as the devotee proffers to his saint. I think, too, I was restrained by the consciousness of a certain girl at Trois Pistoles on the St. Lawrence, who, if I might believe my vanity, loved me, and to whom, if I might believe my conscience, I had given some sort of claim upon my honor. I cared naught for the girl. I had never intended anything but a light and passing affair; but somehow it had not seemed to me light when Yvonne de Lamourie’s eyes were upon me. A little afterward, revisiting Trois Pistoles on my way to the western lakes, I had found the maiden married to a prosperous trader of Quebec. In the leaping joy that seized my heart at the news I perceived how my fetters had galled; and I knew then, though at first but dimly, that if anywhere in the world there awaited me such a love as I had dreamed of sleeping, but ever doubted waking,—the love that should be not a pastime, but a prayer, not an episode, but an eternity,—it awaited me in Grand Pré village.

In my heart these two years I had carried two clear visions of my mistress. Strange to tell, they were not bedimmed by the much handling which they had endured. They but seemed to grow the brighter and fresher from being continually pressed to the kisses of my soul.

In one of these I saw her as she stood a certain morning in the orchard, prying with insistent little finger-tips into the heart of a young apple-flower, while I watched and said nothing. I know not to this day whether she were thinking of the apple-flower or wondering at the dumbness of her cavalier; but she feigned, at least, to concern herself with only the blossom’s heart. Her wide white lids downcast over her great eyes, her long lashes almost sweeping the rondure of her cheek, she looked a Madonna. The broad, low forehead; the finely chiselled nose, not too small for strength of purpose; the full, firm chin—all added to this sweet dignity, which was of a kind to compel a lover’s worship. There was enough breadth to the gracious curve below the ear to make me feel that this girl would be a strong man’s mate. But the mouth, a bow of tenderness, with a wilful dimple at either delectable corner always lurking, spoke her all woman, too laughing and loving to spend her days in sainthood. Her hair—very thick and of a purply-bronze, near to black—lay in a careless fulness over her little ears. On her head, though in all else she affected the dress of the Grand Pré maids, she wore not the Acadian linen cap, but a fine shawl of black Spanish lace, which became her mightily. Her bodice was of linen homespun, coarse, but bleached to a creamy whiteness; and her skirt, of the same simple stuff, was short after the Acadian fashion, so that I could see her slim ankles, and feet of that exceeding smallness and daintiness which may somehow tread right heavily upon a man’s heart.

The other vision cherished in my memory was different from this, and even more enchanting. It was a vision of one look cast upon me as I left the door of her father’s house. In the radiance of her great eyes, turned full upon me, all else became indistinct, her other features blurred, as it were, with the sudden light of that look, which meant—I knew not what. Indeed, it was ever difficult to observe minutely the other beauties of her face as long as the eyes were turned upon one, so clear an illumination from her spirit shone within their lucid deeps. Hence it was, I suppose, that few could agree as to the colour of those eyes—the many calling them black, others declaring with confidence that they were brown, while some even, who must have angered her, averred them to be of a very cold dark grey. I, for my part, knew that they were of a greenish hazel of indescribable depth, with sometimes amber lights in them, and sometimes purple shadows very mysterious and unfathomable.

As I sat now looking down into the village I wondered if Yvonne would have a welcome for me. As I remembered, she had ever shown goodwill toward me, so far as consisted with maidenly reserve. She had seemed ever ready for tales of my adventure, and even for my verses. As I thought of it there dawned now upon my heart a glimmering hope that there had been in that last unforgotten look of hers more warmth of meaning than maid Yvonne had been willing to confess.

This thought went to my heart and I sprang up in a kind of sudden intoxication, to go straightway down into the village. As I did so I caught the flutter of a white frock among the trees of the De Lamourie orchard. Thereupon my breath came with a quickness that was troublesome, and to quiet it I paused, looking out across the marshes and the tide toward Blomidon. Then for the first time I observed a great bank of cloud that had arisen behind the Cape. It was black and menacing, ragged and fiery along its advancing crest. Its shadow lay already upon the marshes and the tide. It crept smoothly upon the village. And at this moment, from the skirts of a maple grove on the summit of the hill behind me, came a great and bell-like voice, crying:

“Woe, woe to Acadie the Fair, for the hour of her desolation cometh!”

Chapter II
Grûl’s Warning

“These ten years,” I exclaimed to myself angrily (for I love not to have a dream rudely broken), “has Grûl been prophesying woe; and I see not that aught comes of it save greater strength to his lungs.”