"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?"

"Surely! Until my father and Martin came alone telling us the rest were
gone. It was sore news indeed."

"Unless they saw them lying dead they may still live. You have thought them
dead. But, dear, Helier was with me in the prison in England. He came there
sorely wounded, and I helped to nurse him back to life. We escaped together
and got home together--" Her hands had clasped in her excitement, and the
white glimmer of her face was lifted hopefully to mine, and I hurried on to