“Well, Amélie, blessed are they who do not promise and still perform. I must try and meet my dear boy, so do not quite place me among the impossibles. Good-by, my Lady. Good-by, Amélie.” The old soldier gaily kissed his hand and rode away.
Amélie was thoroughly surprised and agitated out of all composure by the news of the return of Pierre Philibert. She turned aside from the busy throng that surrounded her, leaving her aunt engaged in eager conversation with the Bishop and Father de Berey. She sat down in a quiet embrasure of the wall, and with one hand resting her drooping cheek, a train of reminiscences flew across her mind like a flight of pure doves suddenly startled out of a thicket.
She remembered vividly Pierre Philibert, the friend and fellow-student of her brother: he spent so many of his holidays at the old Manor-House of Tilly, when she, a still younger girl, shared their sports, wove chaplets of flowers for them, or on her shaggy pony rode with them on many a scamper through the wild woods of the Seigniory. Those summer and winter vacations of the old Seminary of Quebec used to be looked forward to by the young, lively girl as the brightest spots in the whole year, and she grew hardly to distinguish the affection she bore her brother from the regard in which she held Pierre Philibert.
A startling incident happened one day, that filled the inmates of the Manor House with terror, followed by a great joy, and which raised Pierre Philibert to the rank of an unparalleled hero in the imagination of the young girl.
Her brother was gambolling carelessly in a canoe, while she and Pierre sat on the bank watching him. The light craft suddenly upset. Le Gardeur struggled for a few moments, and sank under the blue waves that look so beautiful and are so cruel.
Amélie shrieked in the wildest terror and in helpless agony, while Philibert rushed without hesitation into the water, swam out to the spot, and dived with the agility of a beaver. He presently reappeared, bearing the inanimate body of her brother to the shore. Help was soon obtained, and, after long efforts to restore Le Gardeur to consciousness,—efforts which seemed to last an age to the despairing girl,—they at last succeeded, and Le Gardeur was restored to the arms of his family. Amélie, in a delirium of joy and gratitude, ran to Philibert, threw her arms round him, and kissed him again and again, pledging her eternal gratitude to the preserver of her brother, and vowing that she would pray for him to her life's end.
Soon after that memorable event in her young life, Pierre Philibert was sent to the great military schools in France to study the art of war with a view to entering the King's service, while Amélie was placed in the Convent of the Ursulines to be perfected in all the knowledge and accomplishments of a lady of highest rank in the Colony.
Despite the cold shade of a cloister, where the idea of a lover is forbidden to enter, the image of Pierre Philibert did intrude, and became inseparable from the recollection of her brother in the mind of Amélie. He mingled as the fairy prince in the day-dreams and bright imaginings of the young, poetic girl. She had vowed to pray for him to her life's end, and in pursuance of her vow added a golden bead to her chaplet to remind her of her duty in praying for the safety and happiness of Pierre Philibert.
But in the quiet life of the cloister, Amélie heard little of the storms of war upon the frontier and down in the far valleys of Acadia. She had not followed the career of Pierre from the military school to the camp and the battlefield, nor knew of his rapid promotion, as one of the ablest officers in the King's service, to a high command in his native Colony.
Her surprise, therefore, was extreme when she learned that the boy companion of her brother and herself was no other than the renowned Colonel Philibert, Aide-de-Camp of His Excellency the Governor-General.