And in they went to the window of the turret-room, and by the affectionate grin on Hopart’s face it was plain that Guicheaux’s prophecy had not flown wide.
Tiphaïne and Bertrand were standing beside the pool, she in her green gown with the violets thereon, he in his harness, belted and spurred for the road to the sea. He had told her the preceding night of the last melting of his mother’s pride. Tiphaïne had known, when she rose with the dawn, that Bertrand was leaving La Bellière for Cancale that morning.
But it was not of his own home that Bertrand thought as he stood beside Tiphaïne in the mist-wrapped garden. Life had taken for him a deeper tone. No more would he be the free lance, the man of the moors, who fought like an outcast for the law of his own hand.
“So you will go to Cancale?”
She spoke softly, like one who thinks. Bertrand was standing with his shoulders squared, looking at the water, his arms crossed upon his breast.
“To Cancale, my old home.”
“And then—?”
“To the wars again.”
“It is always war with us.”
“It will always be war with us till the English are driven into the sea.”