"Because you are beautiful," she answered curtly. All beautiful things had a fascination for her.
This woman above was very fair to see, and the girl looked at her as she looked at the purple butterflies in the sun; at the stars shining down through the leaves; at the vast, dim, gorgeous figures in the cathedral windows; at the happy children running to their mothers with their hands full of primroses, as she saw them in the woods at springtime; at the laughing groups round the wood-fires in the new year time when she passed a lattice pane that the snowdrift had not blocked; at all the things that were so often in her sight, and yet with which her life had no part or likeness.
She stood there on the rough flints, in the darkness cast from the jutting beams of the house; and the other happier creature leaned above in the light, white and rose-hued, and with the silver bells of the pins shaking in her yellow tresses.
"You are old Flamma's granddaughter," cried the other, from her leafy nest above. "You work for him all day long at the mill?"
"Yes."
"And your feet are bare, and your clothes are rags, and you go to and fro like a packhorse, and the people hate you? You must be a fool. Your father was the devil, they say: why do you not make him give you good things?"
"He will not hear," the child muttered wearily. Had she not besought him endlessly with breathless prayer?
"Will he not? Wait a year—wait a year."
"What then?" asked Folle-Farine, with a quick startled breath.
"In a year you will be a woman, and he always hears women, they say."