She took this opportunity to run around to tell Paulette and Odette the news, creating quite the sensation she desired. “Mon Dieu!” exclaimed Paulette. “It is your father, Mons. Marcel? How is this? Does he look well? Does he remain long?”
“Come and see for yourself,” Lucie urged. They started out toward the front of the house but met Mons. Du Bois halfway, for he had missed Lucie and had come in search of her.
“Running away so soon from your father, my daughter?” he said.
“Oh, no, papa, but Mons. Le Brun was so busy talking, so I came to bring Paulette.”
“Our good friend Paulette, our good friend.” Mons Du. Bois took both her brown, work-hardened hands and held them for a moment. “How can I thank you, Paulette, for all you have done for this dear daughter?”
“I, monsieur? It is nothing I have done, nothing to speak of. I would be criminal to have done less, and what has she not been to me? I could not have borne it all if it had not been for her.”
“Odette, too. You must see Odette, papa, my friend of whom I have written you,” Lucie chimed in.
So Odette was brought out to be made known to her Lucie’s father, and to greet him somewhat shyly, but with a little dignity of her own. Then Lucie bore her father off for a long, long talk.
For some moments they sat looking in each other’s faces for the changes the year had wrought. The happy, childlike look had gone from Lucie’s eyes. There was a more wistful expression around her mouth, and her face in repose looked very sad. She was not the merry child of the last year’s spring. In her father’s eyes was that far-seeing, rapt expression she had once noticed in Victor’s. It was as if he had seen visions, unearthly things. He looked older, sterner. There were hard, set lines around his mouth.
The change in him gave Lucie a strange, contracted feeling about her throat. She wound her arms around his neck and clung to him very closely while he held her tight. “It seemed as if I should never, never see you again,” she murmured. “It has been a whole year, a whole year, papa, since those happy days in our own home. You have heard nothing more?”