And though Jeanne was not so much beyond childhood, it was settled that she would be an old maid. She did not care.
"Let us go out under the oak, Pani," she exclaimed. "I want to look at something different from the Citadel and the little old houses, something wide and free, where the wind can blow about, and where there are waves of sweetness bathing one's face like a delightful sea. And to-morrow we will take to the woods. Do you suppose the birds and the squirrels have wondered?"
She laughed gayly and danced about joyously.
Wenonah sat at her hut door making a cape of gull's feathers for an officer's wife.
"You did not go north, little one," and she glanced up with a smile of approval.
For to her Jeanne would always be the wild, eager, joyous child who had whistled and sung with the birds, and could never outgrow childhood. She looked not more than a dozen years old to-day.
"No, no, no. Wenonah, why do you cease to care for people, when you have once liked them? Yet I am sorry for Louis. I wish he had loved some one else. I hope he will."
"No doubt there are those up there who have shared his heart and his wigwam until he tired of them. And he will console himself again. You need not give him so much pity."
"Wenonah!" Jeanne's face was a study in surprise.
"I am glad, Mam'selle, that his honeyed tongue did not win you. I wanted to warn, but the careful Pani said there was no danger. My brave has told some wild stories about him when he has had too much brandy. And sometimes an Indian girl who is deserted takes a cruel revenge, not on the selfish man, but on the innocent girl who has trusted him, and is not to blame. He is handsome and double of tongue and treacherous. See—he would have given me money to coax you to go out in the canoe with me some day to gather reeds. Then he could snatch you away. It was a good deal of money, too!"