“Le Brun!” cried he to the groom who had brought his horse, and to whom he threw the whip which had made such havoc among the flowers, “lead Black Caesar to the stable again! and hark you! when I bid you bring him out in the early morning another time, lead him to me unbridled and unsaddled, with only a halter on his head, that I may ride as a clown, not as a gentleman!”
Le Brun stared at this speech, and finally regarded it as a capital joke, or else, as he whispered to his fellow-grooms in the stable, he believed his young master had gone mad.
“Pierre Philibert,” continued Amélie, “is down at the salmon pool. Let us join him, Le Gardeur, and bid him good morning once more at Tilly.”
Amélie, overjoyed at her victory, tripped gaily by the side of her brother, and presently two friendly hands, the hands of Pierre Philibert, were extended to greet her and Le Gardeur.
The hand of Amélie was retained for a moment in that of Pierre Philibert, sending the blood to her cheeks. There is a magnetic touch in loving fingers which is never mistaken, though their contact be but for a second of time: it anticipates the strong grasp of love which will ere long embrace body and soul in adamantine chains of a union not to be broken even by death.
If Pierre Philibert retained the hand of Amélie for one second longer than mere friendship required of him, no one perceived it but God and themselves. Pierre felt it like a revelation—the hand of Amélie yielding timidly, but not unwillingly, to his manly grasp. He looked in her face. Her eyes were averted, and she withdrew her hand quietly but gently, as not upbraiding him.
That moment of time flashed a new influence upon both their lives: it was the silent recognition that each was henceforth conscious of the special regard of the other.
There are moments which contain the whole quintessence of our lives,—our loves, our hopes, our failures, in one concentrated drop of happiness or misery. We look behind us and see that our whole past has led up to that infinitesimal fraction of time which is the consummation of the past in the present, the end of the old and the beginning of the new. We look forward from the vantage ground of the present, and the world of a new revelation lies before us.
Pierre Philibert was conscious from that moment that Amélie de Repentigny was not indifferent to him,—nay, he had a ground of hope that in time she would listen to his pleadings, and at last bestow on him the gift of her priceless love.
His hopes were sure hopes, although he did not dare to give himself the sweet assurance of it, nor did Amélie herself as yet suspect how far her heart was irrevocably wedded to Pierre Philibert.