“I can transplant the sweetbriar,” she was telling herself. “It used to grow outside the window where Gerald—what am I saying, where Master Sheffield loved to sit. I believe—”
Oh, what was that sound—horse’s hoofs coming down the lane, a pause for dismounting, a creak of the gate! Whose were those feet on the path behind her coming so quickly? She dared not look round, she could not. She felt suddenly weak and giddy; the trembling of her knees forced her to catch at a branch for support.
“Little Mademoiselle,” said a voice behind her. “What is the matter? Do you know me only in a scarlet coat?”
What happened then all Hopewell might have watched unforbidden, had not all, most fortunately, been occupied with other matters.
“For shame,” said Clotilde, finally freeing herself and realising, of a sudden, where they were. “How can you do so, here by the highroad, where every person in the town can see?”
“I care not who sees,” responded Gerald cheerfully, “but if it will save your blushes, we will go into the Queen’s Garden.”
So there under the linden tree, Clotilde listened to just such words as Alisoun Bardwell had heard there also, the same that Margeret Radpath had hearkened to in the schoolhouse lane, words that had opened the gates to such far-reaching happiness. The thin shadow of the sundial passed the noon mark, stretched its dark finger across one figure and then another on the circle of the dial. Still they sat there, while Clotilde learned how Gerald had gone away in silence on account of that unlucky letter from Miles, of his restless unhappiness in England and his inability to hide at home when he heard of an American ship setting sail for a port so near to Hopewell. Of how Miles had met him at the gate of the inn and, so full of joy that he could not keep his news to himself, had told of his approaching marriage. Whatever Gerald might have already planned to do or say, if indeed he had plans at all, had at once been swept away in his instant desire to reach Clotilde with all the speed he might.
“I wish that dear Master Sheffield might have known of our happiness,” said Clotilde as he concluded his story, “or might at least have seen that it was to come.”
“Perhaps he did,” returned Gerald, “for when I went away he gave me Samuel Skerry’s lucky penny and said, ‘It will be the best good fortune of all, lad, when it brings you back to us.’ So here it is and here am I, and it is on this side of the water that I am going to abide for the rest of my life. The war is over, King George’s quarrel with the Colonies is settled forever and I can, with all honesty, throw in my lot with the Americans.”