"Tell me the rest later. There is no haste."

"I shall feel better for telling it now. I started to climb up the bank.

It was steep, all stones and gravel, and a few little bushes. The stones gave way and kept letting me down--slipping backward. He was still in the water. I heard him tell me to go slow and not hurry. He was very calm, and his voice came up from beneath me, for--" and here she laughed, a little hysterical laugh--more of a sob than a laugh, as if from over-taxed nerves--"for I seemed to be sitting on his head."

The Princess also laughed, responsively.

"I shall never know just how it happened, but in one of my struggles the whole bank seemed to slide from under me into the river. I clung to a bush and called to him, and tried to look down, but--he was gone."

A silence followed. The Princess rested her cheek against Elinor's hair, and murmured words of comfort. "How long ago did this happen?"

"A month ago."

More from sympathy than from conviction the Princess said:

"He may return. Stranger things have happened. Perhaps he was carried out to sea--and rescued."

Elinor shook her head. "He was buried beneath the rocks and gravel. If he had risen to the surface, I should have seen him, for the day was clear. No, I know where he is. I see him, all night long, in my sleep, lying at the bottom of the river, his face looking up."

"My child," said the Princess, "listen. With your sorrow you have precious memories. From what you have _not_ told me of your Pats, I know him well. He loved you. That is clear. You loved him. That is also clear. Alone with him in this cottage through an endless winter, and perfectly happy! _Voyons_, you confessed all when you said 'we were happy!' He was the man of a woman's heart! With no hesitation, he gave his life for yours: to save you or die with you. Tell me, what can Heaven offer that is better than a love like that?"

She closed her eyes and drew a long breath. "Ah, these Americans! These extraordinary husbands! I have done nothing but hear of them!"

"He was not my husband."

"But he was to be?"

"Oh, yes!"

The Princess rose, walked around the table and stood beside the chair that held her portrait.

"My child, I respect your grief. My heart bleeds for you, but you are to be envied." With uplifted eyebrows, and her head slightly to one side, she went on: "My husband, the Prince de Champvalliers is good. We adore one another. As a husband he is satisfactory,--better than most. But if, by chance, I should fall into a river, with death in its current, and he were safe and dry upon the bank--"

Sadly she smiled, and with a shrug of the shoulders turned about and moved away.

Erect, and with a jaunty step, she walked about the room, renewing acquaintance with old friends of her youth: with the little tapestried fables on the chairs and sofa; with certain portraits and smaller articles. But it was evident that the story she had heard still occupied her mind, for presently she came back to the table and stood in front of Elinor. With a slight movement of the head, as if to emphasize her words, she said, impressively, yet with the suggestion of a smile in her half-closed eyes:

"Were I in your place, my child, I should grieve and weep. Yes, I should grieve and weep; but I should enjoy my sorrow. You are still young. You take too much for granted. You are too young to realize the number of women in the world who would gladly exchange their living husbands for such a memory." She raised her eyebrows, closed her eyes, and murmured, with a long, luxurious sigh: "The heroism! the splendid sacrifice! I tell you, Mademoiselle, no woman lives in vain who inspires in an earthly lover a devotion such as that!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

XVI

NEWS FROM THE WORLD

Jacqes soon appeared. As his knowledge of English was scant, the Princess gave him the story she herself had heard. Great was his horror on learning that when last he came--in September--and left the usual provisions, the Duc de Fontrevault had been in his grave since the previous June.

He asked many questions. Elinor told him everything that could be of interest, and the Princess listened eagerly to these replies. The old servant seemed pleased when Elinor turned to him with a smile and said, in his own language: "So you are the French Fairy. That is what we always called you after finding your letter. Our lives were saved by that unexpected supply of food."

Then they talked of other matters,--of what things should be carried back to France. And as the strength and energy of the American girl seemed to have gone--owing, perhaps, to a too meagre diet--the Princess insisted upon having her own maid sent up to pack the trunks. Jacques departed on this errand, and to get one or two men. He soon returned with them, and accompanied by the Archbishop. With a half-suspicious interest His Grace studied this young woman, still seated in her usual place by the table, her eyes, with a listless gaze, following the daughter of the house as she opened drawers and cabinets.

His Grace was standing by the big tapestry, between the two busts, his hands behind him.

"Pardon me, my child," he said with a deep-toned benevolence, calculated to impress the guiltless and to awe the guilty, "but what I find it difficult to understand is why your friends did not look for you. They certainly must have guessed the situation."

Elinor shook her head gently, as if she also recognized the mystery.

"To what do you attribute this singular indifference to your fate on the part of your family and friends?"

"I cannot guess. I have no idea."

"It was purely accidental your--your arrival here?"

"Naturally."

In this reply there was something that smote the Archbishop's dignity.

It seemed verging upon impertinence. Again he scrutinized the faded garments, the sunburned face, the hands somewhat roughened by toil, now folded on the table before her. His perceptions in feminine matters were less acute than those of the Princess. He remembered a young man had been a companion to this girl in this cottage, and during a whole year.

It was only natural that the Princess, in treating this person with so much consideration, should be misled by a very tender, romantic heart, and by a Parisian standard of morality too elastic and too easy-going for more orthodox Christians. Into his manner came a suggestion of these thoughts,--his tone was less gracious, a trifle more patronizing. But as the victim supposed this to be his usual bearing, she felt no resentment.

"It was certainly a most unprecedented--one might almost say, incredible--blunder. And in daylight, too."

She nodded.

"Do I understand that you came here in a steamboat?"

"Yes."

"And the steamboat, after leaving you and the young man, kept on her course toward Quebec?"

"Yes."

"Do you remember the name of the boat?"

"The _Maid of the North_."

"The _Maid of the North_!"

Elinor took no notice of this exclamation of surprise. In a purely amiable manner she was becoming tired.

"The _Maid of the North_, did you say?"

"Yes."

"But, my child, when was that? When were you left here?"