“You are not homesick?” It would be strange, indeed, since she had never had a true home.
“I don’t know. That,” giving her head a turn, “is not my real home.”
“Oh, no. But they have all been good to you. Ma’m’selle Barbe is very fond of you.”
“Oh, everybody is good and kind. Even Louis, though he teases. And Père Renaud. But not one of them is you—you.”
“My little girl!” He stooped over and hugged her, kissed her fondly. The child’s love was so innocent, so sincere, that it brought again the hopes of youth.
“And you will always keep me—always?” There was a catch in her breath like a sob.
“Why, yes. What has any one said to you?” with a slight touch of indignation.
“Sophie said you were not my own uncle. What would make you so? Can you never be?”
There was a pathos in her tone that touched him to the heart, even as he smiled at her childish ignorance, and was wild to have the past undone.
“My dear, you can hardly understand. I must have been your mother’s brother.”