“But Sainte Anne is his patron saint?” he questioned.
Nancy shook her head.
“Alas, no! He has shifted his allegiance, and poor Sainte Anne is feeling very much cut up about it.”
“No matter,” St. Jacques answered philosophically. “She is getting her fair share of devotees, and, with France and England at her shrine, she can afford to be content without America.” Then his face darkened. “If only she will be propitious!” he added, with sudden gravity.
Nancy’s hand shut on a tuft of grass at her side. Slowly she had come, during those past days, to the realization of the dual personality of the patron saint of Adolphe St. Jacques. Half human, half divine, the Good Sainte Anne was holding complete sway in the mind of the young Frenchman, just then. Half his unspoken wish was plain to her, half was still beyond her ken. She wondered restlessly when would come the time that she was free to speak. She wondered, too, what were the words she was destined to say.
With a swift motion, St. Jacques settled backward to rest his elbow on the grass at her side. Pushing back his cap, as if its slight weight irritated him, he swept the dark hair from his forehead. Nancy frowned involuntarily as her eyes rested on the angry scar.
“That was a shocking blow,” she said pityingly.
He nodded, with slow thoughtfulness. Then he bit his lip, and shook his hair forward until the scar was completely hidden.
“It might have been worse—perhaps.”
“You’d better ask the Good Sainte Anne to do a miracle on you,” Brock suggested, from his place farther up the slope.