o not permit that," answered Angelique. "It is
sometimes best to sit still and look on."

"That means, Miss Jones," explained Peggy, "that she has set a fashion
to give the rest of the girls a chance. I wouldn't be so mealy-mouthed
about cutting them out. But Angelique has been ruined by waiting so much
on her tante-gra'mere. When you bear an old woman's temper from dawn
till dusk, you soon forget you're a girl in your teens."

"Don't abuse the little tante-gra'mere."

"She gets praise enough at our house. Mother says she's a discipline
that keeps Angelique from growing vain. Thank Heaven, we don't need such
discipline in our family."

"It is my father's grand-aunt," explained Angelique to Maria, "and when
you see her, mademoiselle, you will be surprised to find how well she
bears her hundred years, though she has not been out of her bed since I
can remember. Mademoiselle, I hope I never shall be very old."

Maria gave Angelique the piercing stare which unconsciously belongs to
large black eyes set in a hectic, nervous face.

"Would you die now?"

"I feel always," said the French girl, "that we stand facing the mystery
every minute, and sometimes I should like to know it."

"Now hear that," said Peggy. "I'm no Catholic, but I will say for the
mother superior that she never put that in your head at the convent. It
is wicked to say you want to die."

"But I did not say it. The mystery of being without any body,--that is
what I want to know. It is good to meditate on death."

"It isn't comfortable," said Peggy. "It makes me have chills down my
back."

She glanced behind her through the many-paned open window into the
dining-room. Three little girls and a boy were standing there, so close
to the sill that their breath had touched Peggy's neck. They were
Colonel Menard's motherless children. A black maid was with them,
holding the youngest by the hand. They were whispering in French under
cover of the music. French was the second mother tongue of every
Kaskaskia girl, and Peggy heard what they said by merely taking her
attention from her companions.

"I will get Jean Lozier to beat Monsieur Reece Zhone. Jean Lozier is
such an obliging creature he will do anything I ask him."

"But, Odile," argued the boy, with some sense of equity, "she is not yet
engaged to our family."

"And how shall we get her engaged to us if Monsieur Reece Zhone must
hang around her? Papa says he is the most promising young man in the