So human hearts can remain true to their griefs for forty years! Marjorie pondered on this fact as she walked back through the November-smelling, dark country to Tintajeux. She felt, with the certainty of morbid eighteen, that her own life would be a counterpart of Cassandra Tighe’s. She would never love any other man than Geoffrey, would never marry where she did not love. She was not likely to die. In the glow of her young health, feeling her limbs so lithe--the mere act of walking and breathing an ever renewed bodily pleasure--death lay over an horizon which she had not yet sighted. Ah, if she could hear Geff’s step approaching now, if she could feel his hand-clasp, strong, friendly as in the days of old, the collective pride of the whole Bartrand race would not long stand between them! But the mirk lanes were forsaken; no human step save her own was to be heard. The lights were lit in the scattered cottage homesteads, the children at play round the fire, the elders resting after their day’s work. Through the low windows Marjorie could see one family group after another as she passed along, and felt her own loneliness the greater. As she came near Tintajeux the cry of the owls, than which no more freezing sound exists in nature, was all that gave her welcome. ‘That stain has marked every day of a lonely life throughout forty years.’ The moral of Miss Tighe’s story lingered in Marjorie’s heart. As she and her grandfather sat for the last time together over dessert, old Andros took not unkindly notice of her white cheeks and darkened eyes. ‘You must get back your good looks before you show yourself in Cambridge. Women are sent into the world to be graceful. When they fail in that, they fail in everything. Be a senior wrangler if you will, but keep your complexion. You have grown much more like your father of late.’ This was the highest form of praise Andros Bartrand could offer her. ‘Don’t go back to the little skinny Spanish witch of former days.’ ‘I wish I could, sir,’ cried Marjorie, a flash of quickly-roused mutiny in her eyes. ‘The days when I was a little skinny Spanish witch were better than any I am likely to know again in this world.’ CHAPTER XLVII BESIDE THE CRADLE ‘I just feel we are too happy. It makes me tremble, Gaston. I would rather see the speck of cloud no bigger than a man’s hand than for ever live in dread of it.’ ‘You would rather have anything than the actual, my dear. That is a little weakness of the sex. Surely your daughter ought to fill every crevice of your dissatisfied heart!’ ‘She fills it, fuller than my heart can hold--my own sweet baby. She is a wonderfully forward child, is she not? So strong of her age,--so intelligent--so beautiful!’