“Say, rather,” said I, smiling, “that you would honestly try your best to kill me. It would be an interesting experiment. Well, now we understand each other. _I_ will honestly try my best to do you what will be, in my eyes, the sorest injury in the world. But I will try by fair means only, and if I fail I will bear you no grudge. In all else, however, believe that I do greatly desire your welfare, and will seize with eagerness any occasion of doing you a service. You are perhaps less unworthy of Mademoiselle de Lamourie than I am, save that you cannot love her so well. And _now_,” I added with a smile, “will you take my hand?” As I held it out to him he at first drew back and seemed disposed to repulse me. Then his face cleared. “You are honest!” he exclaimed, and wrung my hand with great cordiality. “I rather like you—and I am very sorry for you. I have her promise.” “Well,” said I, “if also you have her love you are the most fortunate man on God’s earth!” “I have it!” said he blithely, and strode off down the path between the apple-trees, his fine shoulders held squarely, and a confidence in all his bearing. But a wave of pity for him, and strange tenderness, went over me in that moment, for in that moment I felt an assurance that I should win. It was an assurance doomed to swift ruin. It was an assurance destined soon to be hidden under such a vast wreckage of my hopes that even memory marvelled when she dragged it forth to light. Chapter VIII The Moon in the Apple-bough During all our conversation we had stood in plain view of the windows, so that our friendly parting must have been visible to all the house. On my return within doors I found Yvonne walking up and down in a graceful impatience, her black lace shawl thrown lightly about her head. “If you want to,” said she, “you may come out on the porch with me for a little while, monsieur. I want you to talk to me.” “Yvonne,” exclaimed her mother, in a rebuking voice, “will not this room do as well?” “No, indeed, little mamma,” said she wilfully. “_Nothing_ will do as well as the porch, where the moonlight is, and the smell of the apple-blossoms. You know, dear, Grand Pré is not Paris!” “Nor yet is it Quebec,” said I pointedly. Monsieur de Lamourie smiled. Whatever Yvonne would was in his eyes good. But her mother yielded only with a little gesture of protest. “Yvonne is always a law unto herself,” she murmured. “And to others, I judge,” said I, following the light figure out upon the porch, and closing the door behind me. I praised the saints for the freedom of Grand Pré. At Quebec Mademoiselle would have been the most formal of the formalists, because in Quebec it was easy to be misjudged.