Chapter IX - Page 2

take you on my horse and fly with you. I shall come as your knight, as your deliverer, some day."

"Alas!" said she, with a sigh, "you would find me very heavy. One has nothing to do here but grow lazy and--ciel!--fat."

If my meeting with her sister had not made it impossible and absurd, I should have offered my heart to this fair young lady then and there. Now I could not make it seem the part of honor and decency. I could not help adoring her simplicity, her frankness, her beautiful form and face.

"It is no prison for me," I said. "I do not long for deliverance. I cannot tell you how happy I have been to stay--how unhappy I shall be to leave."

"Captain," she said quickly, "you are not strong; you are no soldier yet."

"Yes; I must be off to the wars."

"And that suggests an idea," said she, thoughtfully, her chin upon her hand.

"Which is?"

"That my wealth is ill-fortune," she went on, with a sigh. "Men and women are fighting and toiling and bleeding and dying to make the world better, and I--I am just a lady, fussing, primping, peering into a looking-glass! I should like to do something, but they think I am too good--too holy."

"But it is a hard business--the labors and quarrels of the great world," I suggested.

"Well--it is God's business," she continued. "And am I not one of his children, and 'wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?' It was not too good for the man who said that."

"But what would you do?"

"I do not know. I suppose I can do nothing because--alas! because my father has bought my obedience with a million francs. Do you not see that I am in bondage?"

"Be patient; the life of a rich demoiselle is not barren of opportunity."

"To be gay--oh! one might as well be a peacock; to say pretty things, one might better be a well-trained parrot; to grace the court or the salon, I had as soon be a statue in the corner--it has more comfort, more security; to be admired, to hear fine compliments--well, you know that is the part of a pet poodle. I say, captain, to be happy one must be free to do."

I looked into her big eyes, that were full of their new discovery.

"I should like to be among the wounded soldiers," said she, her face brightening. "It did make me very happy to sit by your bedside and do for you."

There was a very tender look in her eyes then.

She started to rise. A brier, stirring in the breeze, had fallen across her hair. She let me loose the thorns, and, doing so, I kissed her forehead--I could not help it.

"M'sieur!" she exclaimed in a whisper. Then she turned quickly away and stood tearing a leaf in