Except that she spoke unsmiling and ignored Bibi-Ri, except for her deathly pallor, she seemed without the least consciousness of a terrible irony. And when my poor friend made some sound in his throat her pure brow clouded a bit: she pouted.
"Have you been making yourself tiresome again with the visitors, Maman? Now where is the good of that? I wish you would not start fretting with everybody.... Yes, I shall be married. Yes, I shall be married to-morrow. By special civil license and by the priest from La Foa. There! It is all settled.... I hope you can find something more amusing for our guests."
Incredible to see how quiet she was, how composed, how youthfully unstrained. Only when her heavy lids swept over Bibi-Ri and their glances crossed could you detect like electric charges the unacknowledged tension behind.
"Oh, for amusement," chuckled Mother Carron, with a savage humor, "Bibi-Ri is amused: right enough. Sacred stove—yes!... Only he says the affair is impossible."
For the first time Zelie regarded him fairly.
"I see no reason why any one should think so. Unless he forgets—as I never do any more—that I am the daughter of convicts."
Ah, there was steel in that girl! What? The way she said it! Very simply. Without rancor, you understand. Letting it bite of itself. Without a quaver from that crisis of despair in which she must have learned to say it. In a flash I knew how the gleaming, soft, full-blooded slip of a creature had stood up against this tremendous aunt of hers. And could stand. And would!... And Bibi-Ri: he knew too. His babbling protest died cold on his lips.
"My convict father married my convict mother in this convict country," she went on, evenly. "I was born here. I must live and die here. I could never look to marry outside—could I?... They would say I was tainted.... For the rest—well, I have only to please myself, I believe."
And mother Carron nodded like a grim showman.
"Eh? What do you think of that? A wise infant—eh? Could anything be more just and reasonable?"