LET US DRINK TO THE HEALTH OF THE ABSENT. 169 pushing the table into the window. Petitpère made the salad very quickly and dexterously, and uncorked the wine and the cider. Reine had no fear of his transgressing before Catherine. "If my aunts were to see me now," thought Catherine, and she smiled to herself as she thought of Mrs. Buckington's face of apoplectic horror at the sight of Petitpère's blouse at the head of the table; of Lady Farebrother trembling in horror of popery upon Mount Ephraim. It was amusing to watch all the tide of white caps and blouses down below; it was odd and exciting to be dining in this quaint old tower with all the people shouting and laughing underneath. It was not so great a novelty to Reine as to Catherine; she was a little silent, and once she sighed, but she was full of kind care for them all, and bright and responding. "Petitpère," she said, "give mademoiselle some wine, and Toto and Josette too." "Let us drink to the health of the absent," said Petitpère, solemnly. 66 66 But Catherine gave a sudden exclamation, and put down her glass untouched. Look, ah, look," she cried, pointing through the window. 'Who is that?" She cried out; she half feared it was a vision that would vanish instantly as it seemed to have come. Who was that standing there in a straw hat, looking as she had seen him look a hundred times before? It was no dream, no "longing passion unfulfilled" taking form and substance for a time. It was Richard Butler, and no other, who was standing there in the middle of the place, looking up curiously at their window. Petitpère knew him directly. "It is Monsieur Richard," he said, hospitably, and as if it was a matter of course. "Reine, my child, look there. He must come up. "Qui fait de la peinture," he explained hastily to Catherine. "But you recognize him. The English are acquainted among each other." Recognize him! Dick was so constantly in Catherine's thoughts that, if he had suddenly appeared in the place of the Virgin on the high altar of the chapel, I think she would scarcely have been very much surprised after the first instant. That he should be there seemed a matter of course; that he should be absent was the only thing that she found it so impossible to believe. As for Reine, she sat quite still with her head turned away; she did not move until the door opened and Dick came in, stooping under the low archway. He was just as usual; they might have been in Mrs. Butler's drawing-room in Eaton Square, Catherine thought, as he shook hands first with one and then with another. "Did you not know I was coming to Tracy ?" he said to Catherine, as he sat down. "I found nobody there and no preparations, but they told me you were here, and so I got Pélottier to give me a lift. I knew Mademoiselle Reine would kindly take me back," he added, turning to Reine. She had looked up at last and seemed trying to speak indifferently, but her two cheeks were burning. "You know we are going back in a cart," she said with some harshness. "It is, perhaps, a different conveyance from any you are used to." "Do you think I am likely to have been dazzled by the splendour of Pélottier's gig?" Dick asked, smiling. Reine did not like being laughed at. "You used to object to many things," she said vexed, and then melting. "Such as they are, you know you are welcome to any of ours." "Am I?" Dick answered looking kindly at her. Catherine envied Reine at that instant. She had nothing, not even a flower of her own to offer Dick, except, indeed, she thought, with a little smile, that great bouquet out of poor Monsieur Fontaine's garden. If it was a sort of Miserere before, what a triumphal service was not the little evening prayer to Catherine! They went into the chapel after dinner for a minute or two. Sitting there in the darkness, she thought, silly child, that heaven itself would not seem more beautiful with all the radiance of the crystal seas and rolling suns than did this little shrine. To her as to Petitpère the Deliverande was a little heaven just now, but for Petitpère, Dick's presence or absence added but little to its splendour. There was Dick, meanwhile, a shadowy living figure in the dimness. Catherine could see him from where she sat by Reine. How happy she was! In all this visionary love of hers, only once had she thought of herself that day when she sat by the well-at other times she had only thought of Dick, and poured out all the treasure in her kind heart before him. That he should prize it she never expected: that he should return it had never once crossed her mind. All her longing was to see him and hear of him, and some day, perhaps, to do him some service, to be a help, to manifest her love in secret alms of self-devotion and fidelity and charity. She looked up at the string of silver hearts; no longer did they seem to her emblems of sad hearts hung up in bitterness, but tokens of gladness placed there before the shrine. Petitpère was driving, and proposed to go back another way. The others sat face to face as they had come. The afternoon turned grey and a little chilly. Reine took Josette on her knee; Catherine wrapped Toto in her shawl. Dick had asked Catherine all the questions people ask by this time. He didn't see her doubtful face when he told her he had not waited for an answer to the letter announcing his coming. "Madame de Tracy isn't like you, Mademoiselle Chrétien," said Dick. "She doesn't snub people when they ask for hospitality." It struck Catherine a little oddly, afterwards, that Dick should speak to Reine in this reproachful tone, that Reine should answer so shortly and yet so softly, so that one could hardly have told whether she was pleased or angry-at the time she only thought that he was there. Yesterday she had longed for a sight of the lines his pen had scratched upon a paper, to-day she was sitting opposite to him with no one to say one word. Petitpère's short cut was longer than it should have been, but Catherine would have gone on for ever if she had held the reins. All the grey sky encompassed them all the fields spread into the dusk-the soft fresh winds came from a distance. The pale yellow shield of the horizon was turning to silver. out in the cottage lattices. As the evening closed in, they were sprinkled like glow-worms here and there in the country. Sometimes the cart passed under trees arching black against the pale sky; once they crossed a bridge with a rush of water below. There was not much colour anywhere, nor form in the twilight, but exquisite tone and sentiment everywhere. The warm lights were coming They passed one or two groups strolling and sitting out in the twilight as they approached Petitport, and the rushing of the sea seemed coming up to meet them at times. They were all very silent. Petitpère had been humming a little tune to himself for the last half-hour; Dick had spoken to Reine one or twice, always in that bantering tone; to Catherine he was charming, gay, and kind and courteous, and like himself in short. "Are you going to stay here, Mr. Butler?" asked Catherine once, suddenly. |