About midnight a dusky yellow appeared in the south-east, and then
the luminous, greenish-yellow rim of the moon appeared and began to
flood the illimitable prairie with its wizard light.
"So this miscreant has been hunting you, Annette?" said Stephens,
for both had unconsciously dropped in rear. "I suppose, ma petite, if
I had the right to keep you from the fans of the water-mill, that I
also hold the right of endeavouring to preserve you from a man whose
arms would be worse than the rending wheel?" She said nothing, but
there was gratitude enough in her eye to reward one for the most
daring risk that man ever ran.
"You do not love this sooty persecutor, do you, ma chere?"--and
then, seeing that such a question filled her with pain and shame, he
said, "Hush now, petite; I shall not tease you any more." The
confusion passed away, and her olive face brightened, as does the
moon when the cloud drifts off its disc.
"I am very glad. Oh, if you only knew how I shudder at the sound of
his name!"
"There now, let us forget about him," and reining his horse closer
to hers, he leaned tenderly towards the girl. She said nothing, for
she was very much confused. But the confusion was less embarrassment
than a bewildered feeling of delight. Save for the dull thud, thud of
the hoofs upon the sod, her companion might plainly have heard the
riotous beating of the maiden's heart.
"And now, about that flower which I gave you this morning. What did
you do with it?"
"Ah, Monsieur, where were your eyes? I have worn it in my hair all
day. It is there now."
"Oh, I see. I am concerned with your head,--not with your heart. Is
that it, ma petite bright eye? You know our white girls wear the
flowers we give them under their throats--upon their bosom. This they
do as a sign that the donor occupies a place in their heart."
He did not perceive in the dusky light that he was covering her with
confusion. Upon no point was this maiden so sensitive, as the
revelation that a habit or act of hers differed from that of the
civilized girl. Her dear heart was almost bursting with shame, and
this thought was running through her mind.
"What a savage I must seem in his eyes." Her own outspoken words
seemed to burn through her body. "But how could I know where to wear
my rose? I have read in English books that gentle ladies wear them
there." And these lines of Tennyson [Footnote: I must say here for
the benefit of the drivelling, cantankerous critic, with a squint in
his eye, who never looks for anything good in a piece of writing, but
is always in the search for a flaw, that I send passages from
Tennyson floating through Annette's brain with good justification.
She had received a very fair education at a convent in Red River. She
could speak and write both French and English with tolerable
accuracy; and she could with her tawny little fingers, produce a true
sketch of a prairie tree-clump, upon a sheet of cartridge paper, or a
piece of birch rind. I am constrained to make this explanation
because the passage appeared in another book of mine and evoked
censure from one or two dismal wiseacres.--E.C.] came running through
her head: "She went by dale, and she went by down,
With a single rose in her hair."