Since then, every moment of the day had been one of rapture. The first sight of her husband in his huge caped coat, which seemed to add further inches to his great height, his call of triumph when he saw her, his arms outstretched, there, far away in the small boat, with a gesture of such infinite longing that for a second or two tears obscured Marguerite's vision. Then the drawing up of the boat against the landing-stage; Percy's spring ashore; his voice, his look; the strength of his arms; the ardour of his embrace. Rapture, in truth, to which the thought of its brief duration alone lent a touch of bitterness. But of parting again Marguerite would not think--not to-day, while the birds were singing a deafening pæon of joy; not while the scent of growing grass, of moist, travailing earth, was in her nostrils; not while the sap was in the trees, and the gummy crimson buds of the chestnuts were bursting into leaf. Not while she wandered up the narrow lane between hedges of blackthorn in bloom, with Percy's arm around her, his loved voice in her ear, his merry laughter echoing through the sweet morning air. After that, breakfast in the low, raftered room--the hot, savoury milk, the home-baked bread, the home-churned butter. Then the long, delicious, intimate talk of love, and of yearnings, of duty and gallant deeds. Blakeney kept nothing secret from his wife; and what he did not tell her, that she easily guessed. But it was from the members of the League that she learned all there was to know of heroism and selflessness in the perilous adventures through which her husband passed with so light-hearted a gaiety. "You should see me as an asthmatic reprobate, m'dear," he would say, with his infectious laugh. "And hear that cough! Lud love you, but I am mightily proud of that cough! Poor old Rateau does not do it better himself; and he is genuinely asthmatic." He gave her an example of his prowess; but she would not allow him to go on. The sound was too weird, and conjured up visions which to-day she would fain forget. "Rateau was a real find," he went on more seriously; "because he is three parts an imbecile and as obedient as a dog. When some of those devils are on my track, lo! the real Rateau appears and yours truly vanishes where no one can find him!" "Pray God," she murmured involuntarily, "they never may!"