Part 21 (1/2)

She looked wistfully across the river.

Jack watched her. His heart ached for her, and he bent nearer.

”Forgive me for causing you any unhappiness,” he said. ”Will you?”

”Yes.”

Oh! where was her vengeance now? So far beneath her!

”These four days have been the most wretched days to me, the most unhappy I have ever lived,” he said. The emotion in his voice brought the soft colour to her face. She did not answer; she would have if she had wished to check him.

”I will never again, as long as I live, give you one moment's--displeasure.” He was going to say ”pain,” but he dared not.

Still she was silent, her idle white fingers clasped in her lap, her eyes fixed on the river. Little by little the colour deepened in her cheeks. It was when she felt them burning that she spoke, nervously, scarcely comprehending her own words: ”I--I also was unhappy--I was silly; we both are very silly--don't you think so?

We are such good friends that it seems absurd to quarrel as we have.

I have forgotten everything that was unpleasant--it was so little that I could not remember if I tried! Could you? I am very happy now; I am going to listen while you amuse me with stories.” She curled up against a tree and smiled at him--at the love in his eyes which she dared not read, which she dared not acknowledge to herself.

It was there, plain enough for a wilful maid to see; it burned under his sun-tanned cheeks, it softened the firm lips. A thrill of contentment pa.s.sed through her. She was satisfied; the world was kind again.

He lay at her feet, pulling blades of gra.s.s from the bank and idly biting the whitened stems. The voice of the Lisse was in his ears, he breathed the sweet wood perfume and he saw the sunlight wrinkle and crinkle the surface ripples where the water washed through the sedges, and the long gra.s.ses quivered and bent with the glittering current.

”Tell you stories?” he asked again.

”Yes--stories that never have really happened--but that should have happened.”

”Then listen! There was once--many, many years ago--a maid and a man--”

Good gracious--but that story is as old as life itself! He did not realize it, nor did she. It seemed new to them.

The sun of noon was moving towards the west when they remembered that they were hungry.

”You shall come home and lunch with me; will you? Perhaps papa may be there, too,” she said. This hope, always renewed with every dawn, always fading with the night, lived eternal in her breast--this hope, that one day she should have her father to herself.

”Will you come?” she asked, shyly.

”Yes. Do you know it will be our first luncheon together?”

”Oh, but you brought me an ice at the dance that evening; don't you remember?”

”Yes, but that was not a supper--I mean a luncheon together--with a table between us and--you know what I mean.”

”I don't,” she said, smiling dreamily; so he knew that she did.

They hurried a little on the way to the Chateau, and he laughed at her appet.i.te, which made her laugh, too, only she pretended not to like it.

At the porch she left him to change her gown, and slipped away up-stairs, while he found old Pierre and was dusted and fussed over until he couldn't stand it another moment. Luckily he heard Lorraine calling her maid on the porch, and he went to her at once.

”Papa says you may lunch here--I spoke to him through the key-hole. It is all ready; will you come?”

A serious-minded maid served them with salad and thin bread-and-b.u.t.ter.