Amelie showed the precious note to Pierre. It only needed that to complete their happiness for the day. The one cloud that had overshadowed their joy in their approaching nuptials was passing away, and Amelie was prouder in the anticipation that Le Gardeur, restored to himself, sober, and in his right mind, was to be present at her wedding and give her away, than if the whole Court of France, with thousands of admiring spectators, were to pay her royal honors.
They sauntered on towards a turn of the stream where a little pool lay embayed like a smooth mirror reflecting the grassy bank. Amelie sat down under a tree while Pierre crossed over the brook to gather on the opposite side some flowers which had caught her eye.
"Tell me which, Amelie!" exclaimed he, "for they are all yours; you are Flora's heiress, with right to enter into possession of her whole kingdom!"
"The water-lilies, Pierre, those, and those, and those; they are to deck the shrine of Notre Dame des Victoires. Aunt has a vow there, and to-morrow it must be paid; I too."
He looked up at her with eyes of admiration. "A vow! Let me share in its payment, Amelie," said he.
"You may, but you shall not ask me what it is. There now, do not wet yourself further! You have gathered more lilies than we can carry home."
"But I have my own thank-offering to make to Notre Dame des Victoires, for I think I love God even better for your sake, Amelie."
"Fie, Pierre, say not that! and yet I know what you mean. I ought to reprove you, but for your penance you shall gather more lilies, for I fear you need many prayers and offerings to expiate,--"she hesitated to finish the sentence.
"My idolatry, Amelie," said he, completing her meaning.
"I doubt it is little better, Pierre, if you love me as you say.
But you shall join in my offering, and that will do for both.
Please pull that one bunch of lilies and no more, or Our Lady of Victory will judge you harder than I do."
Pierre stepped from stone to stone over the gentle brook, gathering the golden lilies, while Amelie clasped her hands and silently thanked God for this happy hour of her life.
She hardly dared trust herself to look at Pierre except by furtive glances of pride and affection; but as his form and features were reflected in a shadow of manly beauty in the still pool, she withdrew not her loving gaze from his shadow, and leaning forward towards his image, "A thousand times she kissed him in the brook, Across the flowers with bashful eyelids down!"
Amelie had royally given her love to Pierre Philibert. She had given it without stint or measure, and with a depth and strength of devotion of which more facile natures know nothing.
Pierre, with his burden of golden lilies, came back over the brook and seated himself beside her; his arm encircled her, and she held his hand firmly clasped in both of hers.
"Amelie," said he, "I believe now in the power of fate to remove mountains of difficulty and cast them into the sea. How often, while watching the stars wheel silently over my head as I lay pillowed on a stone, while my comrades slumbered round the campfires, have I repeated my prayer for Amelie de Repentigny! I had no right to indulge a hope of winning your love; I was but a rough soldier, very practical, and not at all imaginative. 'She would see nothing in me,' I said; and still I would not have given up my hope for a kingdom."
"It was not so hard, after all, to win what was already yours, Pierre, was it?" said she with a smile and a look of unutterable sweetness; "but it was well you asked, for without asking you would be like one possessing a treasure of gold in his field without knowing it, although it was all the while there and all his own.
But not a grain of it would you have found without asking me, Pierre!"
"But having found it I shall never lose it again, darling!" replied he, pressing her to his bosom.
"Never, Pierre, it is yours forever!" replied she, her voice trembling with emotion. "Love is, I think, the treasure in heaven which rusts not, and which no thief can steal."
"Amelie," said he after a few minutes' silence, "some say men's lives are counted not by hours but by the succession of ideas and emotions. If it be so, I have lived a century of happiness with you this afternoon. I am old in love, Amelie!"
"Nay, I would not have you old in love, Pierre! Love is the perennial youth of the soul. Grand'mere St. Pierre, who has been fifty years an Ursuline, and has now the visions which are promised to the old in the latter days, tells me that in heaven those who love God and one another grow ever more youthful; the older the more beautiful! Is not that better than the philosophers teach, Pierre?"