“Oh, you may soon know that. To-morrow, perhaps.”
“Meanwhile may I see Ma’m’selle de Longueville?”
“She is at the Marchands’.”
Monsieur Laflamme bowed. He did not care to subject himself to the clear, intent eyes of Madame Marchand. They were too penetrating.
A fortune was not so easily won, after all. Fate was playing at cross-purposes. Renée and Wawataysee were skimming over the lake in an ice boat. If he had guessed that he might have walked home with her in the twilight.
Renée was brilliant with the bloom of the frosty air as she came in, and her eyes were like stars. A pang went to Gaspard’s heart. Ought she not take her place on a higher round than this little town of traders and trappers and farmers, many of them scarcely knowing how to read? There might be beautiful, satisfactory years before her—years with educated, refined people. He knew something of the larger cities and their advantages; he could guess at many of the charms of the beautiful, fascinating, historic Paris, with its palaces and villas and works of art and wonderful gardens. Should she be shut out of all these and affiliate with the wilderness of the New World? No. If it broke his heart, she should be free to choose.
“You had a fine time!” he commented.
“Oh, splendid! Do you know, I shall hate to have the snow and ice vanish! Oh, you should have seen the sky to-night when the red sun dropped down behind the mountains and everything was illumined as from some mighty blaze. And then fading, changing to such gorgeous colors. Oh, what is back of it all? What wonderful power and glory?”
Yes, she was capable of appreciating higher and finer opportunities than any she would ever have here.
He went through to the shop. He could not enjoy the fire when Mère Lunde was clattering pots and pans. But he had his own, if the place was a conglomeration of everything. He had made himself a big, easy chair, and the great buffalo-skin thrown over it kept off drafts. The fire was poked up; the dry pine made an exhilarating blaze, and the pungency affected one like drinking wine—sent a thrill to the farthest pulse.