“I wish to know your miseries, my dear Francis, to share them with you, and help you to bear them. We will overcome them together—be assured of that, my adored——”
Passion was getting the mastery over me; I caught her in my arms and pressed her to my breast. She made no resistance, but, as if wearied with the struggle, she rested her head on my shoulder—her head so charming in its luxuriancy of golden curls. Her eyes were closed and her cheeks were crimson. I thought myself in the seventh heaven.
Suddenly a croaking voice broke the profound silence of the wood—
“Don’t let me disturb you. Ah! Now Missy has a lover, it is not surprising she neglects the little boy.”
Such were the words we heard close to us, uttered by a hoarse voice and in the coarsest of country dialects.
Chapter XXXI.
Francis, pale with terror, disengaged herself from my embrace, and stepped forward a few paces. As for myself, I stood as if thunder-struck.
The person who had spoken these offensive words, and who had doubtless been watching our movements for some time, was an old peasant woman bearing a strong resemblance to the witches in Macbeth. Her sharp black eyes, bare skinny arms, as red and dry as a boiled crab, her face wrinkled and tanned, her blue checked handkerchief tied over her white cap, and the stick on which she supported herself, all contributed to call up before my mind one of those creatures our ancestors would have burned alive. I confess I wished her such a fate when she advanced towards Francis and said, with her ingrained impertinence—
“Now, miss—now I see what you have been so busy about the last five weeks, that you have never once had time to come and see the child.”