"My head feels light and swims around as if it was on the rapid river. But I must go home, I——"
"Art afraid? Well, I promise nothing shall harm thee. Lie down again. I will send Wanamee with the word. Will it make thee happy—content?"
The child looked at her hostess as if she was studying her, but her intellect had never been roused sufficiently for that. There was a vague delight stealing over her as slumber does at times, a confusion of what might have been duty if she had understood that even, in staying away from what was really her home. Mère Dubray would be angry. She would hardly beat her, she had only slapped her once during her illness, and that was to make her swallow some bitter tea. And something within her seemed to cry out for the adjuncts of this place. She had been in the room before, she had even peered into the Sieur's study. He always had a kindly word for her, she was different from the children of the workmen, and looked at one with sober, wondering eyes, as if she might fathom many things.
"You do not want to go back?"—persuasively.
Was it the pretty lady who changed the aspect of everything for her?
"Oh, if I could stay here always!" she cried, with a vehemence of more years than had passed over her head. "It is better than the beautiful world where I sit on the rocks and wonder, and dream of the great beyond that goes over and meets the sky. There are no cruel Indians then, and I want to wander on and on and listen to the voices in the trees, the plash of the great river, and the little stream that plays against the stones almost like the song you sung. If one could live there always and did not get hungry or cold——"
"What a queer, visionary child! One would not look for it in these wilds. The ladies over yonder talk of them because it is a fashion, but when they ride through the parks and woods they want a train of admirers. And with you it is pure love. Could you love any one as you do nature? Was any one ever so good to you that you could fall down at their feet and worship them? Surely you do not love Madame Dubray?"
"M'sieu Ralph has been very kind. But you are like a wonderful flower one finds now and then, and dares not gather it lest the gods of the woods and trees should be angry."
"But I will gather you to my heart, little one," and she slipped down beside the couch, encircling the child in her arms, and pressing kisses on brow and legs and pallid cheeks, bringing a roseate tint to them.
"And you must love me, you must want to stay with me. Oh, there was a little one once who was flesh of my flesh, on whom I lavished the delight and tenderness of my soul, and the great Father took her. He sent nothing in her place, though I prayed and prayed. And now I shall put you there. Surely the good God cannot be angry, for you have no one."