’But George said that I was to let you know, and that you would tell your uncle.’  This was quite unintelligible to Marie; but it was clear to her that she could make no such announcement, after the conversation which she had had with her uncle.  It was quite out of the question that she should be the first to announce George’s return, when she had been twice warned on that Sunday afternoon not to think of him.  ‘You had better let my uncle know yourself,’ she said, as she walked away.  But young Greisse, knowing that he was already in trouble, and feeling that he might very probably make it worse, held his peace.  When therefore one morning George Voss showed himself at the door of the inn, neither his father nor Madame Voss expected him.

But his father was kind to him, and his mother-in-law hovered round him with demonstrations of love and gratitude, as though much were due to him for coming back at all.  ‘But you expected me,’ said George.

‘No, indeed,’ said his father.  ’We did not expect you now any more than on any other day since you left us.’

‘I sent word by Edmond Greisse,’ said George.  Edmond was interrogated, and declared that he had forgotten to give the message.  George was too clever to pursue the matter any farther, and when he first met Marie Bromar, there was not a word said between them beyond what might have been said between any young persons so related, after an absence of twelve months.  George Voss was very careful to make no demonstration of affection for a girl who had forgotten him, and who was now, as he believed, betrothed to another man; and Marie was determined that certainly no sign of the old love should first be shown by her.  He had come back,—­perhaps just in time.  He had returned just at the moment in which something must be decided.  She had felt how much there was in the little word which she had spoken to her uncle.  When a girl says that she will try to reconcile herself to a man’s overtures, she has almost yielded.  The word had escaped her without any such meaning on her part,—­had been spoken because she had feared to continue to contradict her uncle in the full completeness of a positive refusal.  She had regretted it as soon as it had been spoken, but she could not recall it.  She had seen in her uncle’s eye and had heard in the tone of his voice for how much that word had been taken;—­but it had gone forth from her mouth, and she could not now rob it of its meaning.  Adrian Urmand was to be back at Granpere in a few days—­in ten days Michel Voss had said; and there were those ten days for her in which to resolve what she would do.  Now, as though sent from heaven, George had returned, in this very interval of time.  Might it not be that he would help her out of her difficulty?  If he would only tell her to remain single for his sake, she would certainly turn her back upon her Swiss lover, let her uncle say what he might.  She would make no engagement with George unless with her uncle’s sanction; but a word, a look of love, would fortify her against that other marriage.