After that the real pleasure began. Old and young, with little formality, yet with the kind of breeding the French never forgot, and took into the forests with them. André need not have watched for Renée’s half warning. If she could have danced with three in the same set, she had the opportunity.
M. Laflamme was a little piqued, but he captured her at last.
“Ma’m’selle,” in a pause, “you are a true French girl, name and all. You might have come from Paris.”
“As I did once upon a time,” smiling out of bewitching eyes.
“Ah! Can you remember?”
“I was there but one day. At the house of my father. A little child, eight years or so.”
“Not the Count de Longueville?”
“The Count de Longueville. At least, one Count. There may be many,” she replied, with drooping, mischievous eyes.
“But—he has a wife and two sons, the one I mean.”
“My own mother died,” and the grave tone was tenderly sweet. “I hardly knew her. Then I was sent to her people, my grandfather here at St. Louis.”