De Lamourie himself showed me to my room, a low chamber under the eaves, very plainly furnished. In the houses of the few Acadian gentry there was little of the luxury to be found in the seigneurial mansions of the St. Lawrence. In the De Lamourie house, for example, there were but two serving-maids, with one man to work the little farm.

If De Lamourie had noted any excitement on Yvonne’s part, or any abstraction on mine, he said nothing of it. With simple kindness he set down the candle on my dressing-table and wished me good sleep. But at the door he turned.

“Are you well assured that the abbé will not attempt to carry out his threat?” he asked, with a tinge of anxiety in his voice.

“I am confident of it,” I answered boldly. “That worthy ecclesiastic will not try issues with me, when I hold the king’s commission.”

Just why I should have been so overweeningly 59secure is not clear to me now that I look back upon it. That I should have expected the terrible La Garne to bow so pliantly to my command appears to me now the most fatuous of vain follies. In truth I was thinking only of Yvonne. But De Lamourie seemed to take my assurance as final, and went away in blither mood.

My room was lighted by a narrow, high-peaked dormer window, through which I could look out across the moonlit orchards, the level dyke lands, the wide and winding mouth of the Gaspereau, and the far-glimmering breast of Minas. Upon these my eyes rested long—but the eyes of my soul saw quite another loveliness than that of the moon-flooded landscape. They brooded upon Yvonne’s face—the troubled, changing, pleading look in her eyes—her sharp and strange emotion at the last. Over and over it all I went, reliving each moment, each word, each look, each breath. Then, being deeply wearied by my long day’s tramp, but with no hint of sleep coming to my eyes, I threw myself down upon the bed to deliciously think it all over yet again. I had grown sure that Yvonne loved me. Yet once more, in a still ecstasy of reverence and love, I fell at her feet and kissed them. Then I thought about the stone which Mother Pêche had given me, and its mystic virtues, which I would explain to Yvonne on the morrow in the apple-orchard. Then I found myself 60fancying that it was Yvonne who had given me the talisman, bidding me guard it well if I would ever hope to win her from my English rival. And then—the sunlight lay in a white streak across my bed-foot, the morning sky was blue over the dyke lands, and the robins were joyous in the apple-blooms under my window. What a marvellous air blew in upon my face, sweet with all freshness and cleanness and wholesome strength! I sprang up, deriding myself. I had slept all night in my clothes.

At breakfast I found myself in plain favour; I had made good my boast and shielded the house from the Black Abbé. Yvonne met my eager looks with a baffling lightness. She was all gay courtesy to me, but there was that in her face which well dashed my hopes. Some faint encouragement, indeed, I drew from the thought that her pallor (which became her wonderfully) seemed to tell the tale of a sleepless night. Had she, then, lain awake, wearily reproaching herself, while I slept like a clod? If so, my punishment was not long delayed. Before the breakfast was over I was in a fever of despairing solicitude. At last I achieved a moment’s speech with Yvonne while the others were out of earshot.

“This morning,” said I, “in the apple-orchard, by an old tree which I shall all my life remember, 61I am to read you those verses, am I not? That was your decree.”

She faced me with laughter in her eyes, but the eyes dropped in spite of her, and the colour came a little back to her cheeks.

“I decree otherwise this morning,” she said, in a voice whose lightness was not perfect. “I am busy to-day, and shall not hear your poems at all, unless you read them to us this evening.”

“I will read them to you alone,” I muttered, “who alone are the source of them, or I will burn them at once!”

“Don’t burn them,” she said, flashing one radiant glance at me.

“Then when may I read them to you?” I begged.

“When you are older, and a little wiser, and a great deal better,” she laughed, turning away with a finality in her air that convinced me my day was lost.

Putting my bravest face on my defeat, I said to Madame de Lamourie:

“If you will pardon me, Madame, I shall constrain myself and attend to certain duties in and about Grand Pré to-day. I must see the curé; and I have a commission to execute for the Sieur de Briart, which will take me perhaps as far as Pereau. In such cas............