“Well, even if it’s to-morrow it’s still to-day,” I argued.

“I know.  But what I want to know is—­how long we’ve been in here, and it feels to me like days and days.”

But it was impossible to say how long we had slept, and until we got some outside light on the matter we could not decide it.

So we gathered our beds into cushions and sat there side by side, and since our supply of candles was not a very large one, and I could feel her in the dark quite as well as in the light, I lit my pipe and put the lantern out.  And bit by bit she began to tell me of the dreary days when they waited for news of me, and hope grew sick in them, but they would not let it die.

“Your mother was an angel and a saint, and a strong tower, Phil,—­so sweet and good.  How she made me long for a mother of my own!”

“You shall have a share of mine!”

“I’ve made sure of my share already.  It made the ache easier just to be with her, and so I went often to Belfontaine, and she never failed me.  She was always full of hope and confidence.  ‘He will come back to us, my dear,’ she would say.  ’And when we get him back we must try to keep him, though that is not easy in Sercq.’”

“But you know why I went, Carette.”

“Don’t go again, Phil.  It is very hard on the women to have their men-folk go.  All the fear and the heartache are ours.”

“But it is for you we go—­to win what we can for you.”

“Ah, what is it all worth?—­Just nothing at all.  It’s not what you bring in your hands, but what is in your hearts for us, Phil.  Better a cottage on Sercq with our hearts together like this,”—­and I could feel her sweet heart beating through as she nestled up against me with my right arm round her neck,—­than all the plunder of Herm.”

“Then I will never leave you again, my sweet,” and I sealed that pledge in kisses.  “But how we are to live—­”

“Aunt Jeanne will tell you, and I will tell you now.  We are to live at Beaumanoir.  She says she is getting too old for the fanning, and must have help, and so—­”

“So you have arranged it all among you, though for all you knew it was a dead man you were planning for.”

“It kept our hearts alive to plan it, and, besides, we knew you were not dead.  I think we would have felt it if you had been.”

“A woman’s heart is the most wonderful thing in the world and the most precious.  But it may deceive itself.  It believes a thing is because it wishes it to be sometimes, I think, and it won’t believe a thing because it wishes it not to be.”

“Well, that is as it should be, and you are talking like one of your grandfather’s books, Phil,” she said lightly, not guessing what was in my mind.  For it had seemed to me that I ought to tell her of her brother’s death, lest it should come upon her in a heap outside.

“Your father and brothers now,” I asked.  “Did you look to see them back?”