"Quietly, my child, don't give way to excitement." He gently put her from him and crossed himself—a habit of his when suddenly perplexed—then added:
"You have done no evil; but there are proprieties which a young woman must not overstep. You are impulsive, too impulsive; and it will not do to let a young man see that you—that you—"
"Father, I understand," she interrupted, and her face grew very pale.
Madame Roussillon came to the door, flushed with stooping over the fire, and announced that the steak was ready.
"Bring the wine, Alice," she added, "a bottle of Bordeaux."
She stood for a breath of two, her red hands on her hips, looking first at Father Beret, then at Alice.
"Quarreling again about the romances?" she inquired. "She's been at it again?—she's found 'em again?"
"Yes," said Father Beret, with a queer, dry smile, "more romance. Yes, she's been at it again! Now fetch the Bordeaux, little one."
The following days were cycles of torture to Alice. She groveled in the shadow of a great dread. It seemed to her that Beverley could not love her, could not help looking upon her as a poor, wild, foolish girl, unworthy of consideration. She magnified her faults and crudities, she paraded before her inner vision her fecent improprieties, as they had been disclosed to her, until she saw herself a sort of monstrosity at which all mankind was gazing with disgust. Life seemed dry and shriveled, a mere jaundiced shadow, while her love for Beverley took on a new growth, luxuriant, all-embracing, uncontrollable. The ferment of spirit going on in her breast was the inevitable process of self-recognition which follows the terrible unfolding of the passion-flower, in a nature almost absolutely simple and unsophisticated.
Vincennes held its breath while waiting for news from Helm's expedition. Every day had its nimble, yet wholly imaginary account of what had happened, skipping from mouth to mouth, and from cabin to cabin. The French folk ran hither and thither in the persistent rain, industriously improving the dramatic interest of each groundless report. Alice's disturbed imagination reveled in the kaleidoscopic terrors conjured up by these swift changes of the form and color of the stories "from the front," all of them more or less tragic. To-day the party is reported as having been surprised and massacred to a man—to-morrow there has been a great fight, many killed, the result in doubt—next day the British are defeated, and so on. The volatile spirit of the Creoles fairly surpassed itself in ringing the changes on stirring rumors.