The dicing went on. The duc threw and lost again and impassively as ever filled his silver flagon from the pitcher on the long oaken table behind him. “To your next ballad, Monsieur Lescarbot,” he said, politely. But the wine was scarce half way to his lips ere there came a strange interruption. The door opened slowly from without, and a woman entered, an infant in her arms.
In after years, when alone with Imbert in the ruined fort, that scene came back to Biencourt with startling vividness. Once again he beheld the long room dyed red in the glow of the fire; once more he saw them as they started to their feet and stood staring blankly at the stranger. And much cause was there to stare, for women in Port Royal this winter there were none,—least of all grand ladies, such as each movement showed this to be,—while beyond the fort lay naught but a savage, unbroken wilderness. And Biencourt remembered standing thus while one might slowly count ten.
The duc was the first to speak. “You are cold, madame,” he said softly. “You must drink some wine.” And, flagon in hand, he approached her.
But the newcomer, who was blue-eyed and most marvellously fair of face, waved him curtly back. “I have come to ask shelter for myself and babe, from the lord of the seigneurie, monsieur, not to drink wine.” Then, pausing as if for breath, she stood erect beside the door, slender and lissome, a multitude of snow-flakes slowly melting in the red-gold of her hair.
For a moment Poutrincourt was silent. Idly his thoughts travelled the endless forest wastes of Acadie, snow-clad and inhospitable, where, this winter of 1611, was no white settlement beside his own. He had even passed up the great river to Quebec, where his friend Captain Samuel Champlain had three years before planted the banner of the fleur-de-lis, when with a start he became aware the woman’s eyes were fixed haughtily upon him. Then, mindful of his duty, he stepped forward, bowing low, and bade her welcome to his seigneurie of Port Royal, brushing the snow from her long fur mantle with his own white hands. And in an instant more the stranger was ensconced in a chair before the fire.
Biencourt and the duc resumed their gaming, Monsieur Lescarbot took out his tablets preparatory to verse-making, and Imbert busied himself mulling wine for the conclusion of the evening’s potations, which in Port Royal were wont to be of the deepest. But no one ventured to mar the hospitality of Port Royal with a question, and the newcomer proved more taciturn than would have been expected from the laughing curves of her lips, sitting moment after moment silent in the glow of the fire.
The wind still battered at the door and muttered angrily in the chimney, but to Biencourt the room was filled with a new light—a strange radiance that seemed to emanate from the stranger’s golden head or the crimson kirtle which she wore. He forgot his game. He watched only her drooping lashes, with a vague hope that soon she might raise them. And as he watched, the pile of money before him lessened rapidly.
“I fear you bring me ill-luck, madame,” he cried at last, ruefully smiling toward her. “These pistoles have a sorry trick of vanishing since you came.”
The stranger raised her lashes, as he had hoped.
She smiled back responsively, and her eyes caught an amber light from the leaping flames. “Would you turn me into the night again?” she asked, jestingly, yet with a strange inflection in her voice as though speaking to some one far away.