“I shall get well at once. I will not have people quoting me as a love-sick girl,” a little resentfully.
Still Wawataysee looked doubtfully at her. She tried to be more cheerful that evening, and Uncle Gaspard smiled and called her his little girl. Would he always love her? She dared not ask him now. When she had sorrowed for him in his long absence it had been a comfort to go up to the little church and pray. But would it not be monstrous to ask God to keep Uncle Denys from loving Barbe? She was lovely and kind, and merry too, for that matter, and if Uncle Denys——
Ah, there was the sting!
There crept into her heart a curious dull ache, a sense of something she did not like, that she shrank from, just as one shuts one’s eyes to some unpleasant sight. And this time it was not Barbe. Some one nearer, one that she was answerable for, and she did not like the half consciousness. She had believed the sorrow all hers. What if it was wrong to cherish it and make it another’s sorrow?
She went up to the church one afternoon. There was no one about. The confessional stood open. She thought she would pray, and then she recalled a sentence, “Clean hands and a pure heart.” Was her heart pure, not desiring what might belong to another? And if she snatched at it with over-eager hands and a selfish heart?
She went out quietly and sat on the grass. The soft wind just stirred the trees and brought wafts of perfume and the distant sound of the voices of children at play. The sun was casting long shadows and burnishing the tree-tops out on the fields. A few insects were lazily droning.
A figure came out in the rusty black cassock with the cord around the waist, and the little round cap, where a few straggling locks, much threaded with white, fell below in a half-curling fashion. He glanced her way, then came over to her and she rose with a reverent obeisance.
“It is Ma’m’selle de Longueville. You were little Renée. I remember when you used to come and pray for your uncle that he might be returned in safety. Is there nothing left to pray for?”
The tone was wonderfully sweet, and the eyes gave her such a kindly, tender glance that her heart melted within her.
“I went in the church,” she began in a low tone. “I was troubled about something. I could not find the right prayer. There may be a need before the prayer,” and her voice trembled like a quivering note of music.