"H'idgit congenital! H'ass most tremenjouse! Fool par excellence!"
Miss Lady gazed to her in wonder. "Auntie," she cried, "who?"
"Who should it be but the M'sieu Eddrang?" replied madame. "For a time it is like the book. Now it is not like the book. Ah, if I Clarisse Delchasse, were a man, and I take the lady away from one man, I'd h'run away with her myself, me, and I'd keep on the h'run. But M'sieu Eddrang, how is it that he does? Bah! He does not speak t'ree, four word to you the whole time on the boat. You, who have been the idol of the young gentilhommes of New Orleans—you, who have been worship'! Now, it is not one man, and it is not another, although ma 'tite fille, she is alone, here in this desert execrable. Bah! It is for you to disspise that M'sieu Eddrang. He is not grand homme. Come. I take you back to New Orleans."
Miss Lady looked at her with a curious shade of perplexity on her face. "You mistake, auntie," said she. "I do not wish to be back at New Orleans. I am done with the stage—I'll never dance again. I am— I'm just lonesome—I don't know why. I have been so troubled. I don't know where I belong. Auntie, it's an awful feeling not to know that you belong somewhere, or to some one."
"You billong to me," said Madame Delchasse, stoutly. "As to that h'idgit,—no, never!"
"But Mr. Eddring brought us safely through the forest," said Miss Lady, arguing now for him. "I don't know what became of Mr. Decherd, or why he left us, but we can't accuse Mr. Eddring of anything ungentlemanly after that time. But why was he so anxious to come? Why was Colonel Blount so anxious? I don't understand all these things. And Mr. Eddring and Colonel Cal seem to want to talk to each other, and not to us."
"Bah! Those men!" said Madame Delchasse. "What can they do but for us? This place, it is horrible neglect'. But come, I show you my soss-pan."
As Miss Lady had said, Blount and Eddring were long and eagerly engaged in conversation. They were rapidly running over the new links in the strange chain of evidence which had now for some time been forging, Eddring being especially curious now as to Blount's discoveries in connection with the girl Delphine.
"It's plain enough," said Blount, finally, "that this thing between Decherd and Delphine had been going on for a long time. Delphine left a good many papers, which we found among her belongings. It's all turned out just about as we figured before you went to New Orleans; but we found one letter from Decherd to Delphine that uncovered his hand completely, and it was this, to my notion, that made Delphine so desperate."
"Let me have that letter, Cal."