This ceremony over, they walked towards Mont Violet, averting their heads
as they passed the Manor Cartier, in a kind of tribute to its departed
master--as a Stuart Legitimist might pass the big palace at the end of
the Mall in London. In the wood-path, Fille took his sister's hand.
"I will tell you what you are so trembling to hear," he said. "There
they are at peace, Jean Jacques and Virginie--that best of best women."
"To think--married to Virginie Poucette--to think of that!" His sister's
voice fluttered as she spoke. "But entirely. There was nothing in the
way--and she meant to have him, the dear soul! I do not blame her, for
at bottom he is as good a man as lives. Our Judge called him 'That dear
fool, Jean Jacques, a man of men in his way, after all,' and our Judge
was always right--but yes, nearly always right."
After a moment of contented meditation he resumed. "Well, when Virginie
sold her place here and went to live with her sister out at Shilah in the
West, she said, 'If Jean Jacques is alive, he will be on the land which
was Zoe's, which he bought for her. If he is alive--then!' So it was,
and by one of the strange accidents which chance or women like Virginie,
who have plenty of courage in their simpleness, arrange, they met on that
three hundred and sixty acres.
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