De Crespigney smiled; he felt pleased and flattered; he also understood her better and loved her more, as he remembered that she had always cherished a sweet, loyal love for old familiar friends and places. He suddenly recalled the days when he had first known her as an infant of three years old, when some one had broken the head of her doll, and he himself had bought her a splendid young lady of waxen mould with rosy cheeks and flaxen hair, and dressed in silk attire, how she had hugged her poor old headless dolly to her faithful little heart and refused to part with it in favor of the radiant new one.
And later when she first arrived at the Promontory, bringing a little mongrel dog, who died soon after, and to comfort her he brought home a little white poodle, how sadly she turned away from the new claimant of her notice, murmuring, “Oh, uncle, I can’t love another little dog so soon,” though a few days afterwards she picked up the little poodle and petted him, muttering, “Poor Carlo, it wasn’t your fault that poor little Flora died, was it?” and loved him ever afterwards.
About the same time, reading the story of “Beauty and the Beast,” she had sighed, and said, “If I had been Beauty I would have loved the dee-ar old Beast; I would not have wanted to have his head cut off to change him into anything else, not even a fairy prince!”
All these traits of her childhood recurred to the mind of De Crespigney, as he listened to the little penitent’s frank confession.
“I understand, dear heart! I understand perfectly,” he said, as he raised her hand and pressed it to his lips.
She smiled radiantly on him, and then turned and looked about her, as if in search of other changes.
Then her eyes fell upon the form of a young man seated on a rock, and apparently engaged in fishing.
She bent forward and suddenly exclaimed:
“Oh, Marcel, there is David Lindsay! I know it is David Lindsay! He has grown tall; of course, I expected to find him grown up, but he has the same face and eyes that I should know if I should meet him in Africa. Oh! I thank the Lord he is not changed into anything else! Oh, Marcel! I must speak to David Lindsay. Here, Laban, stop the horses! Stop them right here!”
The negro coachman touched his hat and drew up opposite the rock on which the young man sat, and within a few feet of it.