If De Lamourie had noted any excitement on Yvonne’s part, or any abstraction on mine, he said nothing of it. With simple kindness he set down the candle on my dressing-table and wished me good sleep. But at the door he turned. “Are you well assured that the abbé will not attempt to carry out his threat?” he asked, with a tinge of anxiety in his voice. “I am confident of it,” I answered boldly. “That worthy ecclesiastic will not try issues with me, when I hold the king’s commission.” Just why I should have been so overweeningly secure is not clear to me now that I look back upon it. That I should have expected the terrible La Garne to bow so pliantly to my command appears to me now the most fatuous of vain follies. In truth I was thinking only of Yvonne. But De Lamourie seemed to take my assurance as final, and went away in blither mood. My room was lighted by a narrow, high-peaked dormer window, through which I could look out across the moonlit orchards, the level dyke lands, the wide and winding mouth of the Gaspereau, and the far-glimmering breast of Minas. Upon these my eyes rested long—but the eyes of my soul saw quite another loveliness than that of the moon-flooded landscape. They brooded upon Yvonne’s face—the troubled, changing, pleading look in her eyes—her sharp and strange emotion at the last. Over and over it all I went, reliving each moment, each word, each look, each breath. Then, being deeply wearied by my long day’s tramp, but with no hint of sleep coming to my eyes, I threw myself down upon the bed to deliciously think it all over yet again. I had grown sure that Yvonne loved me. Yet once more, in a still ecstasy of reverence and love, I fell at her feet and kissed them. Then I thought about the stone which Mother Pêche had given me, and its mystic virtues, which I would explain to Yvonne on the morrow in the apple-orchard. Then I found myself fancying that it was Yvonne who had given me the talisman, bidding me guard it well if I would ever hope to win her from my English rival. And then—the sunlight lay in a white streak across my bed-foot, the morning sky was blue over the dyke lands, and the robins were joyous in the apple-blooms under my window. What a marvellous air blew in upon my face, sweet with all freshness and cleanness and wholesome strength! I sprang up, deriding myself. I had slept all night in my clothes.