It was a heavy blow to Antoine,—for he had half made up his mind to run away with her himself.
A strip of paper slipped from a volume on Antoine's desk, and fluttered to his feet.
"Do not be angry" said the bit of paper, piteously; "forgive us, for we love."
Three years went by. Antoine had entered the Church, and was already looked upon as a rising man; but his face was pale and his heart leaden, for there was no sweetness in life for him.
Four years had elapsed, when a letter, covered with outlandish stamps, was brought to the young priest,—a letter from Anglice. She was dying; would he forgive her? Émile, the year previous, had fallen a victim to the fever that raged on the island; and their child, little Anglice, was likely to follow him. In pitiful terms she begged Antoine to take charge of the child until she was old enough to enter a convent. The epistle was finished by another hand, informing Antoine of Madame Jardin's death; it also told him that Anglice had been placed on a vessel shortly to leave the island for some Western port.
The letter was hardly read and wept over, when little Anglice arrived. On beholding her, Antoine uttered a cry of joy and surprise,—she was so like the woman he had worshipped.
As a man's tears are more pathetic than a woman's, so is his love more intense,—not more enduring, or half so subtile, but intenser.
The passion that had been crowded down in his heart broke out and lavished its richness on this child, who was to him, not only the Anglice of years ago, but his friend Émile Jardin also.
Anglice possessed the wild, strange beauty of her mother,—the bending, willowy form, the rich tint of skin, the large tropical eyes, that had almost made Antoine's sacred robes a mockery to him.
For a month or two Anglice was wildly unhappy in her new home. She talked continually of the bright country where she was born, the fruits and flowers and blue skies. Antoine could not pacify her. By-and-by she ceased to weep, and went about the cottage with a dreary, disconsolate air that cut Antoine to the heart. Before the year ended, he noticed that the ruddy tinge had fled from her cheek, that her eyes had grown languid, and her slight figure more willowy than ever.