"Ah! and there I see my nephew Colin.
"Welcome, dear child; thou art child no longer.
"What a fine youth he has grown with the flight of years! I should scarce have known him!"
Whilst aunt and nephew were exchanging amenities in one part of the room, Corinne approached Fritz, who had risen to his feet at sight of her, and putting out a hand said with a shy smile:
"I am glad to welcome you again, Monsieur."
"And I to see you once again, Mademoiselle," he replied. "I have often wondered whether I should ever have that pleasure. The chance of war has brought me and your brother face to face three times already. But I scarce thought I should see you again. I thought these troubled days would have sent you back to France. These are strange places for tender maidens to abide in--these walled cities, with guns without and within!"
"Ah, but I have no home in France," answered the girl, "and I would not be sent away. I have grown to love this strange Western land and the struggle and stress of the life here. I would fain see the end of this mighty struggle. To which scale will victory incline, think you, Monsieur? Will the flag of England displace that of France over the town and fortress of this city of Quebec?"
"Time alone can show that," answered Fritz gravely; "and we must not boast of coming victory after all the ignominious defeats that we have suffered. But this I know--the spirit of England is yet unbroken. She has set herself to a task, and will not readily turn back from it. If the spirit of her sons is the same now as it was in the days of which our fathers have told us, I think that she will not quietly accept repulse."
Corinne's eyes flashed; she seemed to take a strange sort of pride in anticipations such as these.
"I like that spirit," she cried; "it has not been the spirit of France. She has boasted, boasted, boasted of all the wonders she was to perform, and yet she has never made good her hold in the south. Now the tide seems to have turned here in the north; and though men speak brave words of defiance, their hearts are failing them for fear. And have they not reason to fear--they who have done so ignobly?"