"There is the house, ma Brigitte," murmured Joyselle, pressing her hand
close to his side. When she had left the inn arm-in-arm with him, she
had felt as though they must look perilously like a German bride and
groom, but there was in his old-fashioned bearing as he guided her
through the streets a kind of chivalrous courtesy that she liked, and
she began to feel like a princess being presented to his people by her
lord.
"There is their house. I gave it to them twenty-five years ago. It is
their palace, their country-place, their world, to my old people."
Through a half-door in the opposite wall the girl could just catch a
glimpse of the left side of the house. It was hung with trumpet flowers.
Beyond, a clearly defined square of moonlight showed her a smooth patch
of lawn, beyond which the side of a creeper-clad arbour blocked the
view.
"The dinner is to be in the garden; they are to sit in the arbour, and
there will be many narrow tables all over the lawn, which is rather
large behind the house. They are very much interested in it; all of us
will be there, and our children, and--theirs. I am old, ma Brigitte----"
His voice fell sadly as this idea occurred to him, and she pressed his
arm and smiled up at him, her face ruddy in the gaslight.
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