It was plain that her life had been as restricted as mine, though the bonds were different. She was herded with old people, made a wife and mother while yet a child, nursed in shadow instead of in the hot sunshine which produced Annabel de Chaumont.
After that we met each other as comrades meet, and both of us changed like the face of nature, when the snow went and warm winds came.
This looking at her without really approaching was going on innocently when one day Count de Chaumont rode up to the manor, his horse and his attendant servants and horses covered with mud, filling the place with a rush of life.
He always carried himself as if he felt extremely welcome in this world. And though a man ought to be welcome in his own house, especially when he has made it a comfortable refuge for outsiders, I met him with the secret resentment we bear an interloper.
He looked me over from head to foot with more interest than he had ever before shown.
"We are getting on, we are getting on! Is it Doctor Chantry, or the little madame, or the winter housing? Our white blood is very much in evidence. When Chief Williams comes back to the summer hunting he will not know his boy."
"The savage is inside yet, monsieur," I told him. "Scratch me and see."
"Not I," he laughed.
"It is late for thanks, but I will now thank you for taking me into your house."
"He has learned gratitude for little favors! That is Madame de Ferrier's work."