“You poor child!”
Margot’s brown face flushed. She wanted nobody’s pity, and she had not felt that her life was a singular or narrow one till this outsider came. A wish very like Angelique’s, that he had stayed where he belonged, arose in her heart, but she dismissed it as inhospitable. Her tone, however, showed her resentment.
“I’m not poor. Not in the least. I have everything any girl could want, and I have—uncle! He’s the best, the wisest, the noblest man in all the world. I know it, and so Angelique says. She’s been in your towns, if you please. Lived in them, and says she never knew what comfort meant until she came to Peace Island and us. You don’t understand.”
Margot was more angry than she had ever been, and anger made her decidedly uncomfortable. She sprang up hastily, saying:—
“If you’ve nothing to tell I must go. I want to get into the forest and look after my friends there. The storm may have hurt them.”
She was off down the mountain, as swift and sure-footed as if it were not a rough pathway that made him blunder along very slowly. For he followed at once, feeling that he had not been fair, as she had accused, in his report of himself; and that only a complete confidence was due these people who had treated him so kindly.
“Margot! Margot! Wait a minute! You’re too swift for me! I want to—”
Just there he caught his foot in a running vine, stumbled over a hidden rock, and measured his length, head downward on the slope. He was not hurt, however, though vexed and mortified. But when he had picked himself up and looked around the girl had vanished.
[TO BE CONTINUED]