From this hall, passages led into apartments and suites of rooms arranged for use, comfort, and hospitality. The rooms were of all sizes, panelled, tapestried, and furnished in a style of splendor suited to the wealth and dignity of the Seigneurs of Tilly. A stair of oak, broad enough for a section of grenadiers to march up it abreast, led to the upper chambers, bedrooms, and boudoirs, which looked out of old mullioned windows upon the lawn and gardens that surrounded the house, affording picturesque glimpses of water, hills, and forests far enough off for contemplation, and yet near enough to be accessible by a short ride from the mansion.
Pierre Philibert was startled at the strange familiarity of everything he saw: the passages and all their intricacies, where he, Le Gardeur, and Amelie had hid and found one another with cries of delight,--he knew where they all led to; the rooms with their antique and stately furniture, the paintings on the wall, before which he had stood and gazed, wondering if the world was as fair as those landscapes of sunny France and Italy and why the men and women of the house of Tilly, whose portraits hung upon the walls, looked at him so kindly with those dark eyes of theirs, which seemed to follow him everywhere, and he imagined they even smiled when their lips were illumined by a ray of sunshine. Pierre looked at them again with a strange interest,--they were like the faces of living friends who welcomed him back to Tilly after years of absence.
Pierre entered a well-remembered apartment which he knew to be the favorite sitting-room of the Lady de Tilly. He walked hastily across it to look at a picture upon the wall which he recognized again with a flush of pleasure.
It was the portrait of Amelie painted by himself during his last visit to Tilly. The young artist, full of enthusiasm, had put his whole soul into the work, until he was himself startled at the vivid likeness which almost unconsciously flowed from his pencil. He had caught the divine upward expression of her eyes, as she turned her head to listen to him, and left upon the canvas the very smile he had seen upon her lips. Those dark eyes of hers had haunted his memory forever after. To his imagination that picture had become almost a living thing. It was as a voice of his own that returned to his ear as the voice of Amelie. In the painting of that portrait Pierre had the first revelation of a consciousness of his deep love which became in the end the master passion of his life.
He stood for some minutes contemplating this portrait, so different from her in age now, yet so like in look and expression. He turned suddenly and saw Amelie; she had silently stepped up behind him, and her features in a glow of pleasure took on the very look of the picture.
Pierre started. He looked again, and saw every feature of the girl of twelve looking through the transparent countenance of the perfect woman of twenty. It was a moment of blissful revelation, for he felt an assurance at that moment that Amelie was the same to him now as in their days of youthful companionship. "How like it is to you yet, Amelie!" said he; "it is more true than I knew how to make it!"
"That sounds like a paradox, Pierre Philibert!" replied she, with a smile. "But it means, I suppose, that you painted a universal portrait of me which will be like through all my seven ages. Such a picture might be true of the soul, Pierre, had you painted that, but I have outgrown the picture of my person."
"I could imagine nothing fairer than that portrait! In soul and body it is all true, Amelie."
"Flatterer that you are!" said she, laughing. "I could almost wish that portrait would walk out of its frame to thank you for the care you bestowed upon its foolish little original."
"My care was more than rewarded! I find in that picture my beau- ideal of the beauty of life, which, belonging to the soul, is true to all ages."
"The girl of twelve would have thanked you more enthusiastically for that remark, Pierre, than I dare do," replied she.
"The thanks are due from me, not from you, Amelie! I became your debtor for a life-long obligation when without genius I could do impossibilities. You taught me that paradox when you let me paint that picture."
Amelie glanced quickly up at him. A slight color came and went on her cheek. "Would that I could do impossibilities," said she, "to thank you sufficiently for your kindness to Le Gardeur and all of us in coming to Tilly at this time.
"It would be a novelty, almost a relief, to put Pierre Philibert under some obligation to us for we all owe him, would it not, Le Gardeur?" continued she, clasping the arm of her brother, who just now came into the room. "We will discharge a portion of our debt to Pierre for this welcome visit by a day on the lake,--we will make up a water-party. What say you, brother? The gentlemen shall light fires, the ladies shall make tea, and we will have guitars and songs, and maybe a dance, brother! and then a glorious return home by moonlight! What say you to my programme, Le Gardeur de Repentigny? What say you, Pierre Philibert?"
"It is a good programme, sister, but leave me out of it. I shall only mar the pleasure of the rest; I will not go to the lake. I have been trying ever since my return home to recognize Tilly; everything looks to me in an eclipse, and nothing bright as it once was, not even you, Amelie. Your smile has a curious touch of sadness in it which does not escape my eyes; accursed as they have been of late, seeing things they ought not to see, yet I can see that, and I know it, too; I have given you cause to be sad, sister."
"Hush, brother! it is a sin against your dear eyes to speak of them thus! Tilly is as bright and joyous as ever. As for my smiles, if you detect in them one trace of that sadness you talk about, I shall grow as melancholy as yourself, and for as little cause. Come! you shall confess before three days, brother, if you will only help me to be gay, that your sister has the lightest heart in New France."