"When there is no water, I look at myself in your eyes, and see a little brown creature there—that is me. Allons!"
She began to laugh. Much of her bad temper had flown; she was a girl of rapidly changing moods.
It was true that she was mirrored in Jean del' Peyra's eyes. He was observing her attentively. Never before had he seen so handsome a girl, with olive, transparent skin, through which the flush of colour ran like summer lightning in a summer cloud—such red lips, such rounded cheek and chin; such an easy, graceful figure! The magnificent burnished black hair was loose and flowing over her shoulders; and her eyes!—they had the fire of ten thousand flints lurking in them and flashing out at a word.
"How come you here?" asked Jean, in a voice less hard and in a tone less indifferent than before. "This place, La Roque Gageac, is not one for a daughter of Le Gros Guillem. Here we are French. At Domme they are English, and that is the place for your father."
"Ah!" said the girl in reply, "among us women French or English are all the same. We are both and we are neither. I suppose you are French?"
"Yes, I am French."
"And a Bishop's man?"
"I live on our own land—Del Peyraland, at Ste. Soure."
"And I am with my aunt here. My father considers Domme a little too rough a place for a girl. He has sent me hither. At the gates they did not ask me if I were French or English. They let me through, but not my father's men. They had to ride back to Domme."
"He cannot come and see you here?"