“A cousin? I?” Startled, palpitating, Alagwa leaned forward, staring with wide eyes. No white man except her father had ever claimed kin with her. What did it mean, this sudden appearance of one of her blood?
“Yes! You’re my cousin and, egad, you’ll do the family honor! I’m Captain Count Brito Telfair, you know, and you are the Lady Estelle Telfair. Your father was my kinsman. I never met him, for he and his people lived in France, and I and my people lived in England. Your uncle was the Count Telfair. He died not long ago. He had neglected you shamefully, but when he died it became my duty as head of the house to come over here and fetch you back to France and give you everything you want. Do you understand?”
Alagwa did not understand wholly. Not only the words but the ideas were new to her. But she gathered that she had white kinspeople, that they had not altogether forgotten her, and that the speaker had come to bring her gifts from them. Doubtfully she nodded.
“I saw Tecumseh two months ago,” went on Captain Brito, “and I saw you, too.” He smiled engagingly. “You were outside Tecumseh’s lodge as I came out and I remember wishing that my new cousin might prove to be half as charming. Of course I did not know you. Tecumseh told me that he knew where Delaroche’s daughter was, but he refused to tell me anything more. He said he would produce her in two months.” Captain Brito’s face darkened. “These Indians are very insolent, but—Well, I waited for a time, but when Tecumseh went away I made inquiries, and Girty here found you for me. I can’t tell you how delighted I am to find that you and the charming little girl I saw outside the lodge are one and the same. It makes everything delightful.”
Alagwa’s head was whirling. For ten years, practically all of her life that she could remember, she had lived the life of an Indian with no thought outside of the Indians. She had rejoiced with their joys, and grieved with their woes. Like them she had hated the Americans from the south and had looked upon the English on the north as her friends.
And now abruptly another life had opened before her. A redcoat officer had claimed her as kinswoman. The easy, casual, semi-contemptuous air with which he spoke scarcely affected her, for she had been used to concede the supremacy of man. She did not know what this claim might portend, but it made her happy. No thought that she might have to leave her Indian home had yet crossed her mind. Brito’s assertion that he had come to take her to France had not yet seeped into her understanding. To her France and England were little more than words.
Uncertainly she smiled. “I am glad,” she murmured.
Captain Brito took her hand and raised it to his lips. “You will be more than glad when you understand,” he declared, patronizingly. “Of course you can’t realize what a change this means for you.” He glanced round and shuddered. “After this—ugh—England and France will be paradise to you. Get ready and as soon as Tecumseh comes back and gives me the proofs of your identity I’ll take you to Canada and then on to England.”
Alagwa shrank back. “I? To England?” she gasped.
“Of course.” Captain Brito smiled. “All of your house are loyal Englishmen and you must be a loyal Englishwoman. You really don’t know what a wonderful country England is. It’s not a bit like this swampy, forest-covered Ohio. And the people—Oh! Well! you’ll find them very different from the Indians and from the bullying murdering Americans. You’ll learn to be a great lady in England, you know.”