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The day set apart for the arrival of Miss Davis had been voted a holiday and the professor hoped that her non-appearance would not interfere with so pleasant an arrangement. But Desire's ideas were quite otherwise. Sharply on time she descended to the library with her note-book ready. The professor felt injured. "Must we really?" he said. "Yes. I see we must. But mind! I know why you are doing it.
"Just nerves." Desire's smile was wistful. "It isn't a pretty story," she said. "None of the stories I can tell are pretty. That's why I am different from other people. But I am trying. Perhaps I shall get to be more like them presently." The professor banished his dark thoughts with an effort. "God forbid!" he said cheerfully. "And here comes tea!"
But the sore, hot spot, which now seemed ever present in Desire's heart, grew sorer and hotter. To owe a car to the reminder of another woman! Naturally, Desire could do very well without it. "But don't you miss a car terribly?" asked Mary with kind concern. "I cannot miss what I have never had." "Oh, in the west, I suppose one does have horses still." "There may be a few left, I think."
He merely felt that if such a complication should supervene he would bear the news with fortitude. For, speaking colloquially, the professor was finding himself very much "in the air." Desire's mind upon the subject of this guest in particular and of Marys in general, had become clouded to his psychological gaze.
Jonathan, busy with eating, had not observed his sister's face during this recital, but now he said, glancing up: "What on earth do you s'pose put such a lie into his head?" "It isn't all a lie, Jonathan." The boy laid down his knife and fork, and stared at her aghast. "You don't mean you was over there?" he exclaimed. Desire's face was crimson to the roots of her hair. She bowed her head.
The procession was then passing directly underneath the window, and Desire's eyes met the eyes of Marianna. "Stop! Stop!" cried the poor Prince, wildly; "I forbid " An instant later he sank fainting to the floor. The procession went on. Meanwhile the yellow bird had returned to the magician's chamber. It was empty.
Hazel had hung a lily-wreath upon the carved back of Uncle Titus's chair, that no one might sit down in it, and placed it in the recess at Desire's left hand, as she should stand up to be married. "Will you two take each other, to love and dwell together, and to do God's work, as He shall show and help you, so long as He keeps you both in this his world?
Although there were several families in the village which had a claim to equal gentility, their daughters somehow felt that they failed to make good that claim in Desire's presence. They owned, though they found less flattering terms in which to express it, the same air of distinction and dainty aloofness about her, which the farmers' daughters, too humble for jealousy, so admiringly admitted.
Monsieur Bouillard's Joséphine had been dead for seven long years, and in her life she had tormented the good man full sore; even as the Church invariably defers canonisation until long after the death of the saint, so Désiré's appreciation of his wife's splendour of character was a post-mortem tribute to be accepted without a murmur by all the faithful.
Through the pleasant, busy days Desire forgot her almost. But never was she quite free from the pull of that unsevered bond. Until today there had been no actual word from the discarded past. Dr. Farr had not replied to Desire's brief announcement of her marriage. She had not expected that he would.
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