“Thank you, monsieur,” she said very simply, putting her hand in mine with a confidence like a child’s. Her eyes searched my very heart for a second. “I think, with such assistance, we can elude your vigilance, monsieur.”
But on the instant her look changed to one of the deepest gravity. As I have so often thought of that look since, it was a surrender in part, in part a sacrament.
“The South Cove at noon,” she said, with a sort of sob, and flushed and ran hastily into the house.
For a moment or two I stood staring after her in utter bewilderment. The dominant feeling, which sent great gushes of light and warmth through heart and brain and nerve, was that she loved me, that she had revealed herself to me on a swift, inexplicable impulse. This set me reeling in a kind of intoxication. But underneath, clamouring harshly to be heeded, was the problem she had thrust upon me. She had forced me to know just what I had striven so desperately not to know. For the moment, however, I did not think. I simply let myself feel; and, turning mechanically, I walked in a daze down the winding road through the rose garden.
“Of course,” said I to myself, and half aloud to the roses, “she means that I am to act upon her word and take my men safely out of the way to South Cove before noon, leaving the North Harbour, where the ship has gone, perfectly secure. She knows that I can act with a clear conscience on so definite a piece of information as that. She knows that there is nothing else for me to do. She sees that I love her. She trusts me. And she trusts my wit to comprehend her subtle devisings. Irene! Irene!”
And I swung gaily down towards the village through an air more light and sweet, through a sunshine more radiant and clear, under a sky more blue, than ever before my travelled senses had encountered.
I breakfasted at the inn. By the time my messengers had got hold of my scattered men and given them my orders to report to me at South Cove, it wanted but an hour of noon. To South Cove was an hour’s brisk walking, and I set out, with my orderly at my heels. He was a trusty, discreet fellow, with whom I was wont to talk not a little; but to-day my dreams were all-sufficient to me, and I would not let the lad so much as stir his tongue. Arriving at the point where the upland dipped down to South Cove, a narrow inlet thickly screened with woods, I noted the hour as exact noon. Then, liking well the look of the leafage below me, with the glint of water sparkling through, and craving no company but my own and my thoughts, I bade my man wait where he was and watch the roads both ways, and halt the others as they should come up.
The path down through the trees was green-mossed, winding, and steep. I went swiftly but noiselessly. Near the foot, as I was just about to emerge upon the beach, the sound of voices below caught my ear. I essayed to stop myself, slipped, crashed through a brittle screen of dead spruce boughs, and came down, erect upon my feet but somewhat jarred, not ten paces from the spot where a lady and a cavalier, locked in one another’s arms, stood beside a small boat drawn up upon the shingle.
It was mademoiselle, and the man was her brother, as I saw on the instant from the likeness between them. They had unlocked their arms and turned towards me, startled at the sound of my fall. Mademoiselle’s face went white, then flushed crimson, and, drawing herself up, she confronted me with a look of unutterable scorn, mingled with pain and reproach. Apprehension and amusement struggled together in the face of the young seigneur.
For my own part, I had realised on the instant the whole enormity of my mistake. Mademoiselle had told me the plain truth, staking everything on my love, trusting me utterly. My heart sinks now as I recall the anguish of that moment. I had but one thought—to justify myself in her eyes. I sprang forward, stammering.