Meantime the page, apparently well satisfied with the circumstances of his visit, including those of his parting from the fair Marguerite, pursued his way to S. Helier.  The darkness of the autumn evening was relieved by the multitudinous illumination of a cloudless sky.  The lanes, bordered by the fortress-like enclosures of the fields, were shaded overhead by tunnels of interlacing boughs still in the full thickness of their summer foliage.  A bird, disturbed by Elliot’s brushing against the branch on which she roosted, gave a solitary cry of angry alarm; the dogs barked in the distant farms; the grazing cows, tethered in the wayside pastures, made soft noises as they cropped the grass.  Passing on by the old grammar school of S. Manelier and then through the village of Five Oaks, where he scared a quiet family assembled in their parlour by looking in at their window with a grimace and a wild scream, he ran on rapidly by the Town Mills and through the town towards the quay.  When he reached the bridge-head the tide was ebbing; but partly walking, partly wading, he made good his footing on the Castle-rock.  A sleepy sentry challenged, but the page crept through the darkness without deigning a reply.  A ball whizzed through his hat, but did not check his progress.  Availing himself of projections in the wall with which he seemed well acquainted, he entered his own little room by the open casement, and throwing himself on the pallet soon slept the sleep of youth and healthy fatigue.

At Maufant matters were not quite so peaceful.  The ladies there, it may be feared, were ready enough to regret the page’s visit and its consequences, if not to express that regret to the old friend who might with some cause have complained.

Pretending indifference, he sate silently in a seat further from the ladies than that which he had occupied before the page’s intrusion.  Finding him disinclined for talk, Rose read her husband’s letter without taking any further notice of him by whom it had been brought.

At length she broke the awkward silence; replacing the letter in her bosom and turning to Alain, she said:—­

“I must go and get your chamber ready.  I shall be back anon.”  And she left the room by the concealed door.

Left alone with his mistress, Alain fell into a great embarrassment.  Marguerite, for her part, felt a qualm of conscience, had he only known it.  But her amour-propre was, none the less, extremely hurt by his cavalier treatment of her flowers.  She was by no means in love with the saucy Scot, who had indeed given her some offence by the frankness of his leave-taking, though this was a matter of which she was not likely to complain, least of all to her official adorer.

“Pourquoi me boudez-vous, Monsieur?” at last she said; “are you perhaps permitting yourself to be offended at my seeing M. Elliot to the door?  Do you not know that he is our old friend?”

“He is nothing to me,” answered Alain, moodily, “it is you of whom I am thinking.”