Jeannette Leblanc had all the pride of her class; the Irish saloon-keeper with his shining tall hat, the loud-talking mate of the lake schooner, the trim sentinel pacing the fort walls, were nothing to her, and this somewhat incongruous hauteur gave her the air of a little princess.
On this stormy afternoon the captain's wife was in my parlor preparing
to return to her own quarters with some coffee she had borrowed.
Hearing my remark she said, 'O, the snow won't hurt the child, Mrs.
Corlyne; she must be storm-proof, living down there on the beach!
Duncan can take her home.'
Duncan was the orderly, a factotum in the garrison.
'Non,' said Jeannette, tossing her head proudly, as the door closed behind the lady, 'I wish not of Duncan; I go alone.'
It happened that Archie, my nephew, had gone over to the cottage of the commanding officer to decorate the parlor for the military sociable; I knew he would not return, and the evening stretched out before me in all its long loneliness. 'Stay, Jeannette,' I said. 'We will have tea together here, and when the wind goes down, old Antoine shall go back with you.' Antoine was a French wood-cutter, whose cabin clung half-way down the fort-hill like a swallow's nest.
Jeannette's eyes sparkled; I had never invited her before; in an instant she had turned the day into a high festival. 'Braid hair?' she asked, glancing toward the mirror, 'faut que je m' fasse belle.' And the long hair came out of its close braids enveloping her in its glossy dark waves, while she carefully smoothed out the bits of red ribbon that served as fastenings. At this moment the door opened, and the surgeon, the wind, and a puff of snow came in together. Jeannette looked up, smiling and blushing; the falling hair gave a new softness to her face, and her eyes were as shy as the eyes of a wild fawn.
Only the previous day I had noticed that Rodney Prescott listened with marked attention to the captain's cousin, a Virginia lady, as she advanced a theory that Jeannette had negro blood in her veins. 'Those quadroon girls often have a certain kind of plebeian beauty like this pet of yours, Mrs. Corlyne,' she said, with a slight sniff of her high-bred, pointed nose. In vain I exclaimed, in vain I argued; the garrison ladies were all against me, and, in their presence, not a man dared come to my aid; and the surgeon even added, 'I wish I could be sure of it.'
'Sure of the negro blood?' I said indignantly.
'Yes.'
'But Jeannette does not look in the least like a quadroon.'