Gently the little maid stroked the rough grey fur and scowled toward the factory.
So intent was she with her thought that she did not hear the step beside her, springing quickly up when a voice spoke, cool and amused, behind. “Well said, little maid,” it praised; “that was a neat turn.”
The tall stranger, Maren Le Moyne, stood smiling down upon her.
Francette, sharpest of tongue in all the settlement, was at sudden loss before this woman. She looked up into her face and stood silent, searching it with the gaze of a child.
It was a wondrous face, dark as her own, its cheeks as dusky red, but in it was a baffling something that held her quick tongue mute, a look as of great depth, of wondrous strength, and yet of fitful tenderness,—the one playing through the other as flame about black marble, and with the rest a smile.
More than little Francette had beheld that baffling expression and squirmed beneath its strangeness. Francette looked, and the scowl drew deeper.
She saw again this woman leaning slightly forward, her eyes a-glitter on the prostrate DesCaut, her strong hand doubled and flecked with blood, with Loup at her feet,—and quick on the heels of it she saw the look in the factor's eyes as he had commanded her to silence with a motion.
“So?” she flamed at last, recovering her natural audacity, for the maid was spoiled to recklessness by reason of her beauty; “I meant it to be neat.”
At the look which leaped into the eyes of the stranger her own began to waver, to shift from one to the other, and lastly dropped in confusion.
“But spoiled at the end by foolishness,” said Maren Le Moyne, and all the pleasure had slipped from her deep voice, leaving it cold as steel.