"Oh yes," Fifine answered quickly, "my foot scarcely pains at all now, it will be nothing serious, I think, after all." Then in her sweet low voice she commenced to read to her blind old parent who sat in a listening attitude with his hands folded in his lap.
Suddenly the firm voice of the young girl wavered, she stammered and grew distracted. There were footsteps in the distance that made her heart beat violently. It was three days since her accident in the wood, and she was anxiously looking forward to a second interview with her lover. A moment after, her face was suffused with blushes as she found herself confronted by the handsome stranger.
"Pardon, Monsieur," he said addressing the old man, "I have taken the liberty to call on you, to solicit permission for myself and some friends to pass through your grounds on our way to the upper woods."
The voice startled the old man. The words were few and to the point; the speaker had evidently not sought a pretext for familiar intercourse, but his voice had too much of the city cultivation about it to please him entirely. His first thought was of Fifine.
"Are you there, daughter?" he asked stretching forth his hand, to make assurance doubly sure.
Fifine caught it in her gentle grasp and drew nearer to him.
"Tell this stranger in his native tongue," he said slowly, "that your father is blind and cannot see him, but that he will trust him and grant the permission he asks, if he will leave immediately, Preston can show them the road."
"I will spare mademoiselle the painful recital," interrupted the young man, now speaking in French, "for I have understood Monsieur her father."
"Who is this man, Fifine?" De Maistre asked nervously. "Is he from the village?"
"I know not, mon pére," she answered, trying to be calm, and then to the surprise of all, a loud laugh echoed in the evening air, and the voice of the truant parrot called out from the cage above their heads.