A slender, girlish arm wanders out of the coverlid often. She lies, with flushed cheeks and eyes strangely bright.
Tenderly replacing the innocent's little hands under the counterpane, Fran‡ois Ribaut starts with sudden surprise.
He fastens his gaze eagerly on the poor girl's left arm.
Can there be two scars like this?
The sign of the cross.
He is amazed. The little Spanish girl, from whose baby arm he extracted a giant poisonous thorn, bore a mark like this,—a record of his own surgery.
At far Lagunitas, he had said, playfully to Dolores Valois:
"Your little one will never forget the cross; she will bear it forever."
For the incision left a deep mark on baby Isabel Valois' arm.
The old priest is strangely stirred. He has a lightning flash of suspicion. This girl has no history; no family; no name. Who is she?