“And still,” Dr. Howard added cheerily; “I wouldn’t give up hope yet.” Adolphe St. Jacques turned from a listless contemplation of the habitant in the courtyard, and looked the doctor full in the face.
“You think—?” he said interrogatively.
The doctor’s nod was plainly reluctant.
“Yes; but I do not know. It is impossible to tell. If I were in your place, I would hold on as long as I could, on the chance. Meanwhile, take things as easily as you can, and don’t worry.”
“It is sometimes harder to take things easily than to—”
St. Jacques was interrupted by a knock at the door, followed by a call from Nancy.
“May I come in, daddy?”
Hastily the young Frenchman turned to the doctor.
“And you won’t speak to her about it yet?” he urged.
“No. I promise you to wait until you give me permission.”
“Thank you,” St. Jacques answered. “It is better to keep silent for the present. Still, it is a relief to have told you, and to know your opinion.”
“Oh, daddy, I’m coming. I want to talk to you,” Nancy reiterated.
Noiselessly the doctor slid back the bolt on the panelled door, just as Nancy turned the knob. It was done so deftly that the girl pushed open the door and entered the room, without in the least suspecting that she had walked in upon a secret conference.
“You here?” she said, nodding gayly to St. Jacques.
“Yes; but I am just going away.”
“Don’t hurry. I only came to ask my father a question or two. How much longer are we going to stay here, daddy?”
The doctor pressed together, tip to tip, the fingers of his two hands.
“I am sorry, Nancy,” he answered a little deprecatingly; “but I am afraid it will take me fully three weeks longer to finish my work.”
Her face fell.
“Is that all?”
“But I thought you were in a hurry to get home.”
“I was; but I’m not,” she answered, in terse contradiction.
St. Jacques laughed, as he bowed in exaggerated gratitude.
“Canada thanks you for the compliment, Miss Howard.”
“It’s not so much Canada as Quebec, not so much Quebec as it is The Maple Leaf,” she replied. “It is going to be a great wrench, when I tear myself out of this place. But it will be three weeks at least, daddy?”
“Fully that.”
Nancy twisted the letter in her hand.
“I’ve heard again from Joe, and he wants to come, the last of the week,” she said slowly.
St. Jacques caught the note of discontent in her voice and smiled. It escaped the doctor, however, and he made haste to answer,—
“But we are always glad to see Joe. How long will he stay?”
“Two or three days. He has never been here, and he expects me to show him the sights of Quebec. Imagine me, M. St. Jacques, doing the tourist patter, as I take him the grand round!” Then she turned back to her father. “Joe obviously has something on his mind, daddy. You don’t suppose it is a case of Persis Routh.”
The doctor laughed.
“Jealous, Nancy?”
“Of course I am. Joe is my especial property, you know. Besides, I don’t like Persis.”
The doctor laughed again.
“Neither do I. Still, she is wonderfully pretty.”
“Yes,” Nancy added disconsolately; “and she doesn’t have red hair and a consequent pain in her temper. Daddy?”
“Yes.” With his back to the two young people, the doctor was cramming some papers into his limp portfolio.
“Were you going to walk with me, this afternoon?”
“No, my dear; I wasn’t.”
“But you promised.”
“When?”
“At dinner, yesterday. You promised that, if I would let you off then, you would go with me, to-day.”
“Did I? I am sorry. Really, Nancy, I can’t go.”
“But it is a perfect day.”
“I don’t doubt it; but I have an appointment with the ghost of Monseigneur Laval. Both his time and mine are precious.”
“But I want to go,” Nancy said, with a suspicion of a pout.
“Where?”
“Out to Sillery.”
The doctor looked at her in benign rebuke.
“Nancy, it is eight miles to Sillery and back, and your father is short of wind. Even if Monseigneur Laval’s ghost were not calling me, I couldn’t be tempted to take any such tramp as that.”
Just then, though apparently by chance, St. Jacques stepped forward. The doctor’s eyes lighted, as they fell upon this possible substitute.
“You’d better ask M. St. Jacques to go, Nancy. I was just advising him to be out in the open air as much as possible.”
Nancy’s spine stiffened slightly, but quite perceptibly. Much as she liked St. Jacques and enjoyed his society, it was no part of her plan to accept his escort, when it was offered by a third person.
“M. St. Jacques has lectures and things to go to, daddy,” she said, with an accent of calm rebuke.
St. Jacques started to speak; but the doctor forestalled him.
“Then he’d better cut the lectures. There may be such a thing as working too hard.”
Nancy felt a swift longing to administer personal chastisement to her father. She wondered if good men were, of their very goodness, bound to be unduly guileless. She bit her lip. Then she smiled sweetly at St. Jacques.
“But M. St. Jacques may have other plans for the afternoon.”
This time, the Frenchman took the matter into his own hands.
“As soon as it becomes my turn to speak—” he interpolated.
“Well?” Nancy inquired obdurately.
“I should like to say that I have nothing to do, this afternoon; that I was wishing for a walk, and that no other comrade would be half so enjoyable as Miss Nancy Howard.”
“Oh,” Nancy responded. “Is that all?”
“It is enough. Will you go?”
She hesitated.
“If my father hasn’t decoyed you into the trap, quite against your will.”
St. Jacques raised his brows.
“Did you ever know me to say things for the mere sake of being polite?”
“No,” Nancy said honestly; “I never did.”
“Then where is your hat?”
Nancy laughed. Then she departed to wrestle with her hat pins, while the good doctor rubbed his hands with pleasure over the successful tact with which he had won his uninterrupted afternoon.
A round hour later, they stood on the church steps, looking down upon Sillery Cove. One starlit night, long years before, a young general, indomitable in the presence of mortal disease as in the face of an impregnable foe, had dropped down the river to land at that spot and, scaling the cliff, to fight his way to his victorious death. Now the dropping tide had left a ............