“The Englishman has displeased her, for a time,” said he, “but that will pass. She knows the duty of obedience; she respects the plighted word. There can be but one ending; though you may succeed in making her very unhappy—for a time.”
“I will make her very happy,” I said quietly, “so long as time endures for her and me.”
He flashed round upon me with sharp scorn.
“What can you do for her? You, hiding for your life, the ruined upholder of a lost cause! Here she is safe, protected, wealth and security before her. And with you?”
“Life, I think!” said I, rising too, and stretching out my arms. “But listen, father,” I went on more lightly. “I am not so helpless. I have some little rentes in Montreal, you know. And moreover, I am not planning to carry her off to-night. By no means anything so finely irregular. I am not ready. Only, see her I will before I go. If you will not help me, I will stay about this place, about your house indeed, till I meet her. That is all. If you dote upon my going, you know the way to speed me.”
His kind, round face puckered anxiously. But he hit upon a compromise.
“I will have no hand in it,” said he. “But if you are resolved to stay, you may as well find her without loss of time. The house we occupy is crowded, and she affects a solitary mood. She walks over the hill and down this way, of an evening, to visit some unhappy ones along by the river. You may see her, perhaps, to-night.”
I grasped his hand and kissed it, but he drew it away, vexed at himself.
“We will talk of other things now,” I said softly. “But do not be angry if I say I love you, father.”
He smiled with an air of reproach; and thereafter talk we did through hours, save for a little time when he was absent fetching me a meal. All that Grûl had told me of the ruin of the French cause he told me in another colour, and more besides of the doom of the Acadians—but upon Yvonne’s name we touched no more by so much as the lightest breath.