I had expected some uncomfortable questioning about my staying out all night; but things do not happen as one expects. I got no questioning, except from one or two of the girls. Mme. Ricard was ill, that was the news in school; the other teachers had their hands full, and did not give themselves any extra trouble about the doings of so regular and trusted an inmate as myself. The business of the day rolled on and rolled off, as if last night had never been; only that I walked in a dream; and when night came I was free to go to bed early and open my budget of thoughts and look at them. From without, all was safe.
All day my thoughts had been rushing off, away from the schoolroom and from studies and masters, to look at a receding railway train, and follow a grey coat in among the crowd of its fellows, where its wearer mingled in all the business and avocations of his interrupted course of life. Interrupted! yes, what a change had come to his and to mine; and yet all was exactly the same outwardly. But the difference was, that I was thinking of Thorold, and Thorold was thinking of me. How strange it was! and what a great treasure of joy it was. I felt rich; with the most abounding, satisfying, inexhaustible treasure of riches. All day I had known I was rich; now I took out my gold and counted it, and could not count it, and gave full-hearted thanks over it.
If the brightness wanted a foil, it was there; the gold glittered upon a cloudy background. My treasure was not exactly in my hand to enjoy. There might be many days before Thorold and I saw each other's faces again. Dangers lay threatening him, that I could not bear to think of; although I knew they were there. And even were this cloud all cleared away, I saw the edges of another rising up along the horizon. My father and my mother. My mother especially; what would she say to Daisy loving an officer in the Northern army? That cloud was as yet afar off; but I knew it was likely to rise thick and black; it might shut out the sun. Even so I my treasure was my treasure still, through all this. Thorold loved me and belonged to me; nothing could change that. Dangers, and even death, would not touch it. My mother's command could not alter it. She might forbid his marrying me; I must obey her; but the fact that we loved each other was a fact beyond her reach and out of her, power, as out of mine. Thorold belonged to me, in this higher and indestructible sense, and also I belonged to him. And in this joy I rejoiced, and counted my treasure with an inexpressible triumph of joy that it was uncountable.