Marie | Page 9

of his strength and cleverness, that needed no meddlesome female creature coming in between him and his business, between him and his religion. He had not let his hair and beard grow, knowing nothing of such practices, but in heart he had been a Nazarite from his youth up,--serving God in his harsh, unloving way; loving God, as he thought; certainly loving nothing else, if it were not the dumb creatures, to whom he was always kind and just. And now--what had happened to him? He asked himself the question sternly, sitting there before the cheerful blaze, yet neither seeing nor feeling it. The answer seemed to cry itself in his ears, to write itself before his eyes in letters of fire. The thing had happened that happens in the story books, that really comes to pass once in a hundred years, they say. He had seen the one woman in the world that he wanted for his own, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish. She was a stranger, a vagabond, trading in iniquity, and gaining her bread by the corruption of souls of men and children; and he loved her, he longed for her, and the world meant nothing to him henceforth unless he could have her. He put the thought away from him like a snake, but it came back and curled round his heart, and made him cold and then hot and then cold again. Was he not a professing Christian, bound by the strictest ties? Yes! How she looked, standing there with the children about her, the little slender figure swaying to and fro to the music, the pretty head bent down so lovingly, the dark eyes looking here and there, bright and shy, like those of a wild creature so gentle in its nature that it knew no fear. But he had taught her fear! yes, he saw it grow under his eyes, just as the love grew in his own heart at the same moment.
Love! what sort of word was that for him to be using, even in his mind? To-morrow she would be gone, this wandering fiddler, and all this would be forgotten in a day, for he had the new cattle to see to, and a hundred things of importance.
But was anything else of importance save just this one girl? and if he should let her go on her way, out into the world again, to certain perdition, would not the guilt be partly his? He, who saw and knew the perils and pitfalls, might he not snatch this child from the fire and save her soul alive?--No! he would begone, as soon as morning came, and take this sinful body of his away from temptation.
How soon would Abby get through her morning work, so that he might with some fair pretext go to the house to see how the stranger had slept, and how she had fared? It would be cowardly to drop the burden on Abby's shoulders, she only a woman like the rest of them, even if she had somewhat more sense.
So Jacques De Arthenay sat by his fire till it was cold and dead, a miserable and a wrathful man; and he too slept little that night.
But Marie slept long and peacefully in Sister Lizzie's bed, and looked so pretty in her sleep that Abby came three times to wake her, and three times went away again, unable to spoil so perfect a picture. At last, however, the dark eyes opened of their own accord, and Marie began to chirp and twitter, like a bird at daybreak in its nest; only instead of daybreak, it was eight o'clock in the morning, a most shocking hour for anybody to be getting up. But Abby had been in the habit of spoiling her sister, who had a theory that she was never able to do anything early in the morning, and so it was much more considerate for her to stay in bed and keep out of Abby's way. This is a comfortable theory.
"I suppose you've been an early riser, though?" said Abby, as she poured the coffee, looking meanwhile approvingly at the figure of her guest, neatly attired in a pink and white print gown, which fitted her in a truly astonishing manner, proving, Abby thought in her simple way, that it had really been a "leading,"--her bringing the stranger home last night.
"Oh, but yes," Marie answered. "I help always Old Billy wiz the dogs first, they must be exercise, and do their tricks, and then they are feed. So hungry they are, the dogs! It make very hard not first to feed them, hein?"
"Is--William--feeble?" Abby inquired, with some hesitation.
"Feeble, no!" said Marie, with a little laugh. "But old, you know, and when he is