The girl shook her head in panic. “Oh! No! No!” she cried. “He must not know.”
“But why not?”
“Because—because”—Alagwa cast about desperately for an excuse. “He would be ashamed of me,” she said. “I am so different from the women he has known.”
Fantine’s eyes twinkled. Emphatically she nodded. “Different? Yes, truly, you are different,” she cried, scanning the dark, oval face, the scarlet lips, the rich hair that tangled about the broad brow. “Ah! But yes, of a truth you are different! In a few months you will be very different. But, monsieur the wise young man will not complain.”
Alagwa’s eyes widened. “You—you think I will be pretty like—like the white women he has known?” she asked, shyly.
“Pretty! Mother of God! She asks whether she will be pretty? Ah! Rascal that you are; to jest with your old nurse so. But—but it is not proper that you should be clothed thus—” again Fantine glanced rebukingly at the girl’s nether limbs—“or that you should travel alone with a young man. That becomes not a demoiselle of France.”
The terror in the girl’s eyes came back. “But I must,” she cried. “Please—please——”
“But why?”
A deep red stained the girl’s cheeks. “Oh,” she cried. “I must know why he seeks me. The Captain Brito want to marry me for what has come to me. This one—this one—Is he, too, base? Does he, too, seek me because I have great possessions? If he finds out who I am I shall never learn. If he does not find out——”
The French woman chuckled. “And the wise young man does not guess that you are a woman!” she cried, holding up her hands. “Ah! Quelle bétise. Eh! bien, I see well it is too late to talk of chaperones now. Have no fear, ma petite! I will not tell him. He seems a good young man—as men go. I read it in his eyes. But truly he is a great fool.”