to the lot of few
maids, with money in plenty and furs fit for a queen. And there is, no
doubt, some Indian blood in thy veins! Thou hast always been wild as a
deer and longing to live out of doors."

Jeanne only laughed. She was so glad to feel at liberty once more. For a
month she had virtually been a prisoner.

Madame De Ber, though secretly glad, joined the general disapproval. She
had half hoped he might fancy Rose, who sympathized warmly with him. She
could have forgiven the alien blood if she had seen Rose go up the
river, in state, to such a future.

And though Jeanne was not so much beyond childhood, it was settled that
she would be an old maid. She did not care.

"Let us go out under the oak, Pani," she exclaimed. "I want to look at
something different from the Citadel and the little old houses,
something wide and free, where the wind can blow about, and where there
are waves of sweetness bathing one's face like a delightful sea. And
to-morrow we will take to the woods. Do you suppose the birds and the
squirrels have wondered?"

She laughed gayly and danced about joyously.

Wenonah sat at her hut door making a cape of gull's feathers for an
officer's wife.

"You did not go north, little one," and she glanced up with a smile of
approval.

For to her Jeanne would always be the wild, eager, joyous child who had
whistled and sung with the birds, and could never outgrow childhood. She
looked not more than a dozen years old to-day.

"No, no, no. Wenonah, why do you cease to care for people, when you have
once liked them? Yet I am sorry for Louis. I wish he had loved some one
else. I hope he will."

"No doubt there are those up there who have shared his heart and his
wigwam until he tired of them. And he will console himself again. You
need not give him so much pity."

"Wenonah!" Jeanne's face was a study in surprise.

"I am glad, Mam'selle, that his honeyed tongue did not win you. I wanted
to warn, but the careful Pani said there was no danger. My brave has
told some wild stories about him when he has had too much brandy. And
sometimes an Indian girl who is deserted takes a cruel revenge, not on
the selfish man, but on the innocent girl who has trusted him, and is
not to blame. He is handsome and double of tongue and treacherous.
See--he would have given me money to coax you to go out in the canoe
with me some day to gather reeds. Then he could snatch you away. It was
a good deal of money, too!"

"