Alan, she knew, trusted her absolutely. Before he went back to Paris, after their love was no longer a secret, he had never once asked her to forfeit any thing of her intimacy with Andrik, nor had he even urged the open cancelling of the betrothal. But she was well aware his own absolute loyalty involved for him a like loyalty from her; and she knew that forgiveness does not belong to those natures which stake all upon a single die.
And so the matter stood thus still. Ynys and Andrik de Morvan were nominally betrothed; and not only the Marquis and the Marquise de Kerival, but Andrik himself, looked upon the bond as absolute.
Perhaps Lois de Kerival was not without some suspicion as to how matters were between the betrothed pair. Certainly she knew that Ynys was not one who would give up any real or imagined happiness because of a conventional arrangement or on account of any conventional duty.
In Alan, Ynys found all that he found in her. When she looked at him, she wondered how she could ever have dreamed of Andrik as a lover, for Alan was all that Andrik was not. How proud and glad she felt because of his great height and strength, his vivid features with their gray-blue eyes and spirituel expression, his wavy brown hair, a very type of youthful and beautiful manhood! Still more she revered and loved the inner Alan whom she knew so well, and recognized with a proud humility that this lover of hers, whom the great Daniel Darc had spoken of as a man of genius, was not only her knight, but her comrade, her mate, her ideal.
Often the peasants of Kerival had speculated if the young seigneur would join hands with her or with Annaik. Some hoped the one, some the other; but those who knew Alan otherwise than merely by sight felt certain that Ynys was the future bride.
"They are made for each other," old Jeanne Mael, the village authority, was wont to exclaim; "and the good God will bring them together soon or late. 'Tis a fair, sweet couple they are; none so handsome anywhere. That tall, dark lass will be a good mother when her hour comes; an' the child o' him an' her should be the bonniest in the whole wide world."
With that all who saw them together agreed.