“Pauline!” he said feebly, and fainted in her arms. An instant later she was speeding to the house, and, rousing her mother and two of the stablemen, she snatched a flask of brandy from a cupboard and hastened back.
An hour later Julien Labrosse lay in the great sitting-room beside the fire, his foot and ankle bandaged, and at ease, his face alight with all that had brought him there. And once again the Indian mother with a sure instinct knew why he had come, and saw that now her girl would have a white woman’s home, and, for her man, one of the race like her father’s race, white and conquering.
“I’m sorry to give trouble,” Julien said, laughing—he had a trick of laughing lightly; “but I’ll be able to get back to the Portage to-morrow.”
To this the Indian mother said, however: “To please yourself is a great thing, but to please others is better; and so you will stay here till you can walk back to the Portage, M’sieu’ Julien.”
“Well, I’ve never been so comfortable,” he said—“never so—happy. If you don’t mind the trouble!” The Indian woman nodded pleasantly, and found an excuse to leave the room. But before she went she contrived to place near his elbow one of the scraps of paper on which Pauline had drawn his face, with that of Manette. It brought a light of hope and happiness into his eyes, and he thrust the paper under the fur robes of the couch.
“What are you doing with your life?” Pauline asked him, as his eyes sought hers a few moments later.
“Oh, I have a big piece of work before me,” he answered eagerly, “a great chance—to build a bridge over the St. Lawrence, and I’m only thirty! I’ve got my start. Then, I’ve made over the old Seigneury my father left me, and I’m going to live in it. It will be a fine place, when I’ve done with it—comfortable and big, with old oak timbers and walls, and deep fireplaces, and carvings done in the time of Louis Quinze, and dark red velvet curtains for the drawingroom, and skins and furs. Yes, I must have skins and furs like these here.” He smoothed the skins with his hand.
“Manette, she will live with you?” Pauline asked. “Oh no, her husband wouldn’t like that. You see, Manette is to be married. She told me to tell you all about it.”
He told her all there was to tell of Manette’s courtship, and added that the wedding would take place in the spring.
“Manette wanted it when the leaves first flourish and the birds come back,” he said gaily; “and so she’s not going to live with me at the Seigneury, you see. No, there it is, as fine a house, good enough for a prince, and I shall be there alone, unless—”