“You are the prisoner of Olotoraca, Mademoiselle? If he has——”
“There! there! Vex me not now, Sir Firebrand.” She smiled.
“But, Mademoiselle——”
“Nay, I am aweary. Vex me not,—there must be no anger between you two. What! Cannot you understand? He can be no enemy to you——”
“But he lied to me! He would have concealed you and kept you from your own people.”
“Yes. I am his prisoner. But you must listen to me and do what I ask of you. When you know, you will say, it is rather a debt of gratitude than of blood that you owe him.”
“Say on, dear heart, I will listen.”
“Then it is this.” She paused, fingering the robe. “Olotoraca loves me, Sydney.—Nay, do not scowl so blackly. For shame! And he but a savage creature of the woods! Can you not understand? It is a kind of worship. Though he comes often to this place, he stands aloof and waits upon me as though I were a very queen, content only to look and do my bidding; asking for nothing and hoping for nothing that I could not give.”
“But he has kept you here!”