Suddenly the Imp flung herself to the ground and buried her face on the old French gentleman's knees, a passion of choking sobs shaking her little body. He laid his hand on her head and murmured in a startled voice:
"Little one, little one! What is it that troubles you?"
"O Monsieur, Monsieur!" she gasped. "What a little beast I've been! Can you ever forgive me? How I have misjudged you!"
CHAPTER XVI AUGUST FOURTH, 1914
July 27, 1914. It is ten days since that strange afternoon down at the old boat-house on the river. I have been living in a kind of dream ever since. I cannot somehow believe that I'm just plain, ordinary Susan Birdsey, living on out-of-the-way little Paradise Green, to whom nothing unusual ever has or ever will happen. Paradise Green is no longer the prosaic place it was. It is the secret spot chosen by history as the home of one of her most romantic characters. Who would ever have thought it? And I, Susan Birdsey, am one of the three humble persons Fate has chosen to be the sharer of this marvelous secret.
I cannot help thinking of what Miss Cullingford said when she suggested that we keep a journal,—that some journals had been interesting and valuable additions to history. That, at least, is what I never supposed mine could possibly be. And yet, if she could only see it now! But she never will, of course, nor any one else, for I have promised Monsieur that I will never, without his permission, reveal a single word of what he has told us. This is not, he says, because it would harm any one, or make the slightest change in the world's affairs, but because of the poor "lost dauphin's" wish.
We three have talked of it incessantly,—Carol, the Imp, and I. Somehow the wonder of it never grows any less. That such a thing could happen here, here on little Paradise Green! And yet the Imp says it is no new thing in history for an exiled king to hide himself away in a strange country amid the humblest surroundings. Where does she get all these historical facts, anyway? Even Carol, who is fond of history and reads a lot of it, doesn't know half as much about things as the Imp does. I am changing my opinion of the Imp very much lately. I used to think she was such a scatter-brained, harum-scarum child, without a serious thought in her head. But I guess we really didn't know her then, and misjudged her a lot.
But it's Louis, our Louis, who seems to us the strangest, the most impossible thing to believe. Before we heard Monsieur's story we imagined this about him, but half the time we told ourselves it wasn't, it couldn't be true. We must be on the wrong track, we said. Now we know that it is all true, and Louis can never be "our Louis," the friend we've always known, any more. How could he be? To begin with, he's going to be the adopted son of the Marquis de Fenouil (I hope that's the way to spell it!), a great nobleman of France, and go away to France and inherit a title, and probably we'll never see him again as long as we live. In addition, as if that weren't enough, he's not the plain American boy we always thought him, but the great-great-grandson of a king of France. And we know this, even if the rest of the world does not, and can never, never feel on the same footing with him again. Not that that will make any difference, I suppose, if he's to go away from here for good. But it's like losing your brother,—like losing Dave, for instance,—only Dave never has been, especially of late years, as friendly and near to us as Louis has been.