Mam'selle did not send for Marcel Longville, she was given strength to go on alone for a little longer. The sick girl rallied with wonderful response to Jo's care which now had a new meaning. She was docile, sweet, and pathetically grateful, but she did not want Jo long out of her sight.
"It is queer, Mam'selle," she sometimes said, "but when you go out of the door it seems as if something, a feeling, got me. And when you come in again, it goes."
"What kind of a feeling, child?"
"I do not know, but I am afraid of it and It is afraid of you. You're like a light, making the darkness go. When I was sickest, sometimes I felt I was lost in the blackness. Then I touched your hand, and I found my way back."
After awhile the "Mam'selle" was shortened to "Mam'sle," then, and quite unconsciously, to Mamsey. To that the girl clung always. And Jo, for no reason but a quaint whim, disdained the Marie by which the girl had been known and called her Donelle after poor Mrs. Morey who had died at Cecile's birth.
The winter after the ice storm settled down seriously. It had no more tantrums, but grew still and white and lonely. The snow was deep and glistening, the sky blue and cloudless and the pines cracked in the cold like the rifles of hunters in the woods. Donelle crept, a little, pale ghost, from the north chamber to the sunny living room. By putting her hand on Nick's head she walked more steadily and laughed at the progress she made. Jo tucked her up on the hard couch under the glowing begonias and geraniums.
"Good Mamsey! It's like coming back from a far, far place," whispered the girl. As strength returned Donelle grew often strangely thoughtful.
"I thought," she confided one night to Jo, "that when I was left alone I could remember, but I cannot."
Then Jo took things in her own hands. She was always one to muster all the help in sight, and not be too particular. She was developing a deep passion for the girl she had rescued; she meant to see the thing through and well through. As soon as she could she meant to go to St. Michael's and learn all that the Sisters knew of the girl's past. She felt she had a power over them that might wring the truth from their frozen silence. Then she meant to use her last dollar in procuring the proper medical skill for the girl. There was a big doctor every summer at St. Michael's Hotel; until summer Jo must do her best.
As her nerves grew calm and steady the experiences of the night of Donelle's crisis lost their hold.