The priest came, but it was not Father Gilbert. The last rites were performed over the man who might be dead already. The baby and the little girl were brought in and the priest blessed them. There were several neighbors ready to perform the last offices, and now Jeanne took all the children out under the tree.
Louis Marsac returned, presently, and offered his help in any matter, crowding some money into the poor, widowed hand. Jeanne he could see nowhere. Pani was busy.
The next day he paid M. Loisel a visit, and stated his wishes.
"You see, Monsieur, Jeanne Angelot is in some sort a foundling, and many families would not care to take her in. That I love her will be sufficient for my father, and her beauty and sweetness will do the rest. She will live like a queen and have servants to wait on her. There are many rich people up North, and, though the winters are long, no one suffers except the improvident. And I think I have loved Mam'selle from a little child. Then, too," with an easy smile, "there is a suspicion that some Indian blood runs in Mam'selle's veins. On that ground we are even."
Yes, M. Loisel had heard that. Mixed marriages were not approved of by the better class French, but a small share of Indian blood was not contemned. When it came to that, Louis Marsac was not a person to be lightly treated. His father had much influence with the Indian tribes and was a rich man.
So the notary laid the matter before Pani and his ward, when the funeral was over, though he would rather have pleaded for his nephew. It was a most excellent proffer.
But he was not long in learning that Jeanne Angelot had not only dislike but a sort of fear and hatred for the young man; and that nothing was farther from her thoughts. Yet he wondered a little that the fortune and adoration did not tempt her.
"Well, well, my child, we shall not be sorry to have you left in old Detroit. Some of our pretty girls have been in haste to get away to Quebec or to the more eastern cities. Boston, they say, is a fine place. And at New York they have gay doings. But we like our own town and have all the pleasure that is good for one. So I am glad to have thee stay."
"If I loved him it would be different. But I think this kind of love has been left out of me," and she colored daintily. "All other loves and gratitude have been put in, and oh, M'sieu, such an adoration for the beautiful world God has made. Sometimes I go down on my knees in the forest, everything speaks to me so,—the birds and the wind among the trees, the mosses with dainty blooms like a pin's head, the velvet lichens with rings of gray and brown and pink. And the little lizards that run about will come to my hand, and the deer never spring away, while the squirrels chatter and laugh and I talk back to them. Then I have grown so fond of books. Some of them have strange melodies in them that I sing to myself. Oh, no, I do not want to be a wife and have a house to keep, neither do I want to go away."
"Thou art a strange child."