When Threlka came, she looked closely at her lady's face, and what she read seemed, after all, to content her.
"Threlka," said my lady in French, "I want the little one."
I turned to her with query in my eyes.
"Tiens!" she said. "Wait. I have a little surprise."
"You have nothing at any time save surprises, Madam."
"Two things I have," said she, sighing: "a little dog from China, Chow by name. He sleeps now, and I must not disturb him, else I would show you how lovely a dog is Chow. Also here I have found a little Indian child running about the post. Doctor McLaughlin was rejoiced when I adopted her."
"Well, then, Madam, what next!"
—"Yes, with the promise to him that I would care for that little child. I want something for my own. See now. Come, Natoka!"
The old servant paused at the door. There slid across the floor with the silent feet of the savage the tiny figure of a little child, perhaps four years of age, with coal-black hair and beady eyes, clad in all the bequilled finery that a trading-post could furnish—a little orphan child, as I learned later, whose parents had both been lost in a canoe accident at the Dalles. She was an infant, wild, untrained, unloved, unable to speak a word of the language that she heard. She stood now hesitating, but that was only by reason of her sight of me. As I stepped aside, the little one walked steadily but with quickening steps to my satin-clad lady on her couch of husks. She took up the child in her arms.... Now, there must be some speech between woman and child. I do not know, except that the Baroness von Ritz spoke and that the child put out a hand to her cheek. Then, as I stood awkward as a clown myself and not knowing what to do, I saw tears rain again from the eyes of Helena von Ritz, so that I turned away, even as I saw her cheek laid to that of the child while she clasped it tight.
"Monsieur!" I heard her say at last.