Captain Danton was as good as his word. He broached the subject to his daughter shortly after breakfast next morning. It was out in the orchard, where she had strayed, according to custom, with a book. It was not so much to read—her favourite authors, all of a sudden, had grown flat and insipid, and nothing interested her—but she liked to be alone and undisturbed, "in sunshine calm and sweet," with the scented summer air blowing in her face. She liked to listen, dreamy and listless, and with all the energy of her nature dead within her, to the soft murmuring of the trees, to the singing of the birds overhead, and to watch the pearly clouds floating through the melting azure above. She had no strength or wish to walk now, as of old. She never passed beyond the entrance-gates, save on Sunday forenoons, when she went slowly to the little church of St. Croix, and listened drearily, as if he was speaking an unknown tongue, to Father Francis, preaching patience and long-suffering to the end.
She was lying under a gnarled old apple-tree, the flickering shadow of the leaves coming and going in her face, and the sunshine glinting through her golden hair. She looked up, with a faint smile, at her father's approach. She loved him very much still, but not as she had loved him once; the power to love any one in that old trustful, devoted way seemed gone forever.
"My pale daughter," he said, looking down at her sadly, "what shall I do to bring back your lost roses!"
"Am I pale?" she said, indifferently. "What does it matter? I feel well enough."
"I don't think you do. You are gone to a shadow. Would you like a change, my dear? Would you not like a pleasure tour this summer weather?"
"I don't care about it, papa."
"But you will come to please me. I shall take you to the Southern States, and fetch you back in the autumn my own bright Kate again."
There was no light of pleasure or eagerness in her face. She only moved uneasily on the grass.
"You will come, my dear, will you not? Eunice will accompany you; and we will visit all the great cities of this New World, that you have so often longed to see."
"I will do whatever you wish, papa," she said, apathetically.