"Knew what, Donelle?"
"Why, how I could not live away off there, even with you, if I remembered Mamsey sitting here making the best of the bits that are left." Then Donelle broke down and wept violently.
Still she was not ill. She was worn to the edge of endurance, but after a day and night of rest in the room beside Jo she got up, quite herself again.
"And we'll say no more about it until spring," vowed Jo, but a wonderful light had crept into her eyes.
"I'm a selfish, unworthy lot——" But the light stayed in her eyes.
Then one day Donelle took her fiddle and strolled out alone to test the virtue of her safe, happy feeling. She went down to the river and sat upon the bare, black rocks. The tide was low and the day was more like spring than early autumn.
"And now," whispered Donelle, "I'll play and think. I have to act too much when Mamsey is watching."
Donelle knew she had to untangle many loose ends, now that she had snapped her thread. She did not want, above anything on earth, that Jo should know her deep, real reason for returning. But how could she make sure with that horrible man, Pierre, loose in Point of Pines? It did not matter how lonely she and Jo might be, if only they could have each other without their common secret rising between them.
Donelle had stayed close to Jo since she had come back, she shrank from everyone. She meant, some day, to go to Marcel Longville—when the Captain was at a safe distance. She meant to have Marcel tell her many things, but not now! She was going to face the future quite bravely, without shame or cringing. Jo should have that reward at least.
In the meantime, Donelle wished fervently, and with primitive directness, that Pierre Gavot would die a quick and satisfactory death and be well out of the way before he again got drunk enough to open his vile lips.