Rose shut her lips tightly together and stamped on the floor.
"Oh, ma petite, you have guessed then! Or, perhaps M'sieu told you. Miladi is to marry him, and they are to go to the nice new house he is building. They are to take you and me and Pani. And he will have the two Montagnais, who have been his good servants. We shall get out of this old, tumble-down post station, and be near the Héberts. Then M'sieu is getting such a nice big wheat field and garden."
Rose was drawing long breaths. She would not cry or utter a complaint. Wanamee approached her, holding out both hands.
"Do not touch me," she entreated, in a passionate tone. "Do not say anything more. When I am a little tranquil I will go and see her. I know what she wants me to say—that I am glad. There is something just here that keeps me from being glad," and she pressed her hands tightly over her heart. "I do not know what it is."
"Surely you are not jealous of miladi? They are grown-up people. And M'sieu told her yesterday—I heard them talking—that you were to be a child to them, that they would both love you. Miladi has been irritable, and not so gay as she used, but she is better now, and will soon be her olden self. She was very nice and cheerful this morning, and laughed with the joy of other days. Oh, child, do not disturb it by any tempers."
Wanamee's eyes were soft and entreating.
"Oh, you need not fear," the child exclaimed, proudly. "Now I will go."
She tapped at miladi's door, and a very sweet voice said—"Come, little stranger."
She opened it. Miladi was sitting by the small casement window, in one of her pretty silken gowns, long laid by. There was a dainty rose flush on her cheek, but the hand she held out was much thinner than of yore, when in the place of knuckles there were dimples.
"Where have you been all these days when I have not seen you, little maid? Come here and kiss me, and wish me joy, as they do in old France. For I am going to take your favorite as a husband, and you are to be our little daughter."