d. He is enraged,
he drives her from his door, she passes all one long, cold night in the
snow outside the _chateau_ on Cote des Neiges hill and when she is
found by the servants two days later, she is as you see her, monsieur,
and the baby is dead! Never again the bright little Natalie-Elmire,
but instead, a pale, faded, vacant-eyed, timid woman. Ah! If I ever
meet _le vieux_ Pacquette in the next world!"

The doctor nodded his bald head sagaciously; as for Ringfield, he was
thinking that here was the opportunity for which he unconsciously had
been waiting, to ask for and probably receive Miss Clairville's equally
dramatic story, when he beheld another buggy coming around a corner of
the road driven recklessly by one of the Archambault boys and in the
buggy sat mademoiselle herself. Her attire, always so different from
village modes, was true on this occasion to her theatrical calling, for
to Ringfield's eye at least she appeared like some Oriental personage,
caught and brought home in native garb, coupled with a very bad temper.
Red and black was her habit and black and red her eyes and angry
compressed lips.

The doctor stood up in his buggy and Miss Clairville in hers, and, as
for a quarter of an hour the excited talk was in rapid French,
Ringfield could only gather that the doctor was endeavouring to
restrain her from going to see her brother. At last, turning away from
Renaud with an imperious wave of the hand, she addressed herself to the
minister in English.

"I understand it is to you the doctor owes his knowledge of my poor
brother's sickness. I only heard of it myself last night on the stage
at eleven o'clock, but I came at once--look at me in all this sinful
finery, I can see you are calling it! Oh, yes, you are. Well, now
that I have come and thrown up my part and my place in the company in
Montreal, he will not allow me to finish my journey and go on to
Clairville!"

"Certainly, you must not think of going!" cried Ringfield. "On no
account must you do such a thing. Do you know what is the matter with
him?"

"Oh, the 'Pic' I suppose, but I'm not afraid of it."

"Yet you have not been vaccinated, I fear!"

"Who told you that? Dr. Renaud, I suppose. Of course. No! No one is
ever vaccinated here, no good Catholics at any rate. Good orthodox
ones, like myself."

The doctor frowned, for he disliked the tone of bravado in which these
words were uttered.

"It's no question of faith. I