Madame smiled with gentle irony. "Oh, yes, indeed! And I shall teach Indian children to speak French as elegantly as Brantome wrote it, and knit nurses" caps for the good squaws. . . . Faith, Anne, dear, if I did not love you, the Henri IV could not carry me back to France quick enough." Madame leaned from the window and sniffed the forest perfumes.
"You will be here six months, then."
"That will give certain personages in France time to forget."
"You were very uncivil to Monsieur le Marquis on board."
"I adore that race, the Perignys," wrathfully. "Twenty times I had the impulse to tell him who I am."
"But you did not. And what can he be doing here?"
"Doubtless he intends to become a Jesuit father: or he is here for the purpose of taking his son back to France. Like the good parent he is, he does not wait for the prodigal"s return. He comes after him."
"Monsieur le Marquis was taken ill last night, so I understand."
"Ah! perhaps the prodigal scorned the fatted calf!"
"Yon are very bitter."
"I have been married four years; my freedom is become so large that I know not what to do with it. Married four years, and every night upon retiring I have locked the door of my bedchamber. And what is the widow"s portion? The menace of the block or imprisonment. I was a lure to his political schemes, and I never knew it till too late.
Could I but find that paper! Writing is a dangerous and compromising habit. I shall never use a pen again; not I. One signs a marriage certificate or a death-warrant."
Anne crossed the room and put her arms round her companion, who accepted the caress with moist eyes.
"You will have me weeping in a moment, Gabrielle," said Anne.
"Let us weep together, then; only I shall weep from pure rage."
"There is peace in the convent," murmured Anne.
"Peace is as the heart is; and mine shall never know peace. I have been disillusioned too soon. I should go mad in a convent. Did I not pa.s.s my youth in one,--to what end?"
"If only you loved a good man."
"Or even a man," whimsically. "Go on with the thought."
"The mere loving would make you happy."
Madame searched Anne"s blue eyes. "Dear heart, are you not hiding something from me? Your tone is so mournful. Can it be?" as if suddenly illumined within.
"Can what be?" asked Anne, nervously.
"That you have left your heart in France."
"Oh, I have not left my heart in France, Gabrielle. Do you not feel it beating against your own?"
"Who can he be?" musingly.
"Gabrielle, Gabrielle!" reproachfully.
"Very well, dear. If you have a secret I should be the last to force it from you."
"See!" cried Anne, suddenly and eagerly; "there is Monsieur du Cevennes and his friend coming up the path. Do you not think that there is something manly about the Chevalier"s head?"
"I will study it some day; that is, if I feel the desire."
"Do you really hate him?"
"Hate him? Faith, no; that would be admitting that he interested me."
The Chevalier and the poet carried axes. They had been laboring since five o"clock that morning superintending the construction of a wharf.
In truth, they were well worth looking at: the boyishness of one and the sober manliness of the other, the clear eyes, tanned skin, the quick, strong limbs. The poet"s eye was always roving, and he quickly saw the two women in the window above.
"Paul, is not that a woman to be loved?" he said; with a gaiety which was not spontaneous.
"Which one?" asked the Chevalier, diplomatically.
"The one with hair like the haze in the morning."
"The simile is good," confessed the Chevalier. "But there is something in the eye which should warn a man."
"Eye? Can you tell the color of an eye from this distance? It"s more than I can do."
The Chevalier"s tan became a shade darker. "Perhaps it was the reflection of the sun."
Victor swung his hat from his head gallantly. The Chevalier bowed stiffly; the pain in his heart stopped the smile which would have stirred his lips. The lad at his side had faith in women, and he should never know that yonder beauty had played cup and ball with his, the Chevalier"s, heart. How nonchalant had been her cruelty the preceding night! That letter! The Chevalier"s eyes snapped with anger and indignation as he replaced his hat. It was enough that the poet knew why the marquis was in Quebec.
"You murmured a name in your sleep last night," said the Chevalier.
"What was it?"
"It sounded like "Gabrielle"; I am not sure."
"They say that Monsieur le Marquis was a most handsome youth," Anne remarked, when the men had disappeared round an angle.
"Then it is possible the son will make a handsome old man," was madame"s flippant rejoinder.
"Supposing, after all, you had married him?" suggested Anne, with a bit of malice; for somehow the Chevalier"s face appealed to her admiration.
"Heaven evidently had some pity for me, for that would have been a catastrophe, indeed." Madame did not employ warm tones, and the lids of her eyes narrowed. "Wedded to a fop, whose only thought was of himself? That would have been even worse than Monsieur le Comte, who was, with all his faults, a man of great courage."
"I have never heard that the Chevalier was a coward," warmly. "In fact, in Roch.e.l.le he had the reputation of being one of the most daring soldiers in France. And a coward would never have done what he did for Monsieur de Saumaise."
"Good Heaven! let us talk of something else," cried madame. "The Chevalier, the Chevalier! He has no part in my life, nor I in his; nor will he have. I do not at present hate him, but if you keep trumpeting his name into my ears I shall." Madame was growing visibly angry. "I will leave you, Anne, with the Mother Superior"s letters. I do not want company; I want to be alone. I shall return before the noon meal."
"Gabrielle, you are not angry at me? I was only jesting."