“All those pleasant dreams are over,” thought Paul. “They have not heard from me for more than a year. Let the break be complete!” and with a rather wistful smile he tore the letter into shreds. Then he went out and turning into a street by the sea-wall came to that house from which Gerard de Montignac had seen him and his agent depart three days before. A lattice was open on the first floor and from a wide window a golden flood of light poured out upon the night. Paul whistled gently and then waited at the door. It was thrown open in a few seconds, just time enough for some one to run down the stairs and open it. Paul stepped into a dark passage and a pair of slender arms closed about his neck and drew his face down.
“Marguerite, why didn’t you tell me how that venomous old harridan treated you?” he whispered.
Marguerite Lambert laughed with a note of utter happiness which no one had heard from her for a long while.
“My dear, what did it matter any longer;” and clinging to him passionately, she pressed her lips to his.
Paul could have added a postscript to Henriette’s story, as Gerard de Montignac had told it to him, if he had so willed. For when Marguerite Lambert stood alone on that verandah, her bundle in her hand, a figure had risen up out of the darkness of the garden and stepped onto the boards. She recoiled at the first moment in terror, and her bundle slipped from her hand and scattered its contents.
“Marguerite,” the man whispered, and with a wild throb of her heart she knew it was Paul Ravenel who was speaking to her.
“You! You!” she said in so low a voice that, though he stood at her side, the words only reached his ears like a sigh. “Oh!” and her arms were about his shoulders, her hands tightly clasped behind his head, and her tear-stained cheeks pressed close against the breast of his tunic. He tried to lift her face, but she would not let him.
“No! No!” she whispered. He could feel her bosom rising and falling, and hear the sobs bursting from her throat. Then she flung up her face.
“My dear! My dear! I was hoping that some sudden thing would kill me, because I couldn’t do it myself. And then—you are here!”
She drew herself from his arms, and not knowing what she did she kneeled and began to gather together her scattered belongings. Paul Ravenel laughed and stooping, lifted her up.