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"It is long since you left France," she commented irrelevantly. "I was not seventeen. It is six years ago." "Do you mean to go back?" "Sometime, Mam'selle. Would you like to go?" "No," she said decidedly. "But why not?" amused. "Because I like Quebec." "It is a wretched wilderness of a place." "Madame Destournier talks about France.
If the dishes were a motley array, a few pieces of silver and polished pewter with common earthenware and curious cups of carved wood as well as birch-bark platters, the viands were certainly appetizing. "One will not starve in this new country," he said. "But it is the winter that tries one, M. Destournier says." "There must be plenty of game. And France sends many things.
M. Destournier has settled quite a plantation of them, and my sister has believed in their conversion. But when one knows them well he has not so much faith in them. They are apt to revert to the original belief, crude superstitions." "It is hard to believe," the girl said slowly. "That depends. Some beliefs are very pleasant and appeal to the heart."
"Thou art a sweet child," said Madame de Champlain. "And whose daughter may she be?" It was an awkward question. Destournier flushed unconsciously. "She is the Rose of Quebec," he made answer, with a smile. "Her parents were dead before she came here."
Stretches of evergreens suggested life, but beyond them hills of snow rising higher and higher, until they seemed lost in the blue, surmounted by a sparkling frost line. The paths had been beaten down occasionally a tract around a doorway shovelled. It was hard and smooth as a floor. Destournier slipped her arm within his, and then gazed at her in surprise. "You must have grown. How tall you are.
She raised her eyes, and they said she was pleased with the plan. Rose busied herself about the room, then suddenly disappeared. She had seen M. Destournier coming up the crooked pathway, and with a parcel in her hand, went out to meet him. "I thought of you. Miladi was delighted with hers. Some seagull must have brought the pit across the ocean. It is so much finer than any we have around here."
M. Laurent thought me the most graceful girl he had ever seen, had so many pretty compliments, and that keeps one in heart, spurs one on to new efforts. M. Destournier is not of that kind. He is cold-blooded, and seems more English than French." Rose colored. The dispraise hurt her. "Fix my pillows, and put me down. I get so tired. And stir up the fire."
"They have come! they have come!" shouted Rose, and she ran in to spread the joyful news. Destournier and Giffard were at a critical point in a game of chess, but both sprang up. The bell pealed out, there was a salute, and every one in the fort rushed out with exclamations of joy. For the sake of the little girl he had left, the Sieur stooped and kissed Rose.
The gray morning began to dawn on the smoking ruin and the fitful blazes that the men were trying hard to extinguish with the snow. Destournier went from one to another. A few huts had not been disturbed, and crying women and children were crowding in them. Some bodies lay silent on the blood-stained snow.
Miladi had not been willing to wait for a conference. But the result would have been the same. Both men looked at her in surprise, and were speechless for a moment. Then M. Destournier, recovering, reached out and took the girl's slim, nerveless hand. "Rose," he said, "M. Boullé has done us all the honor to ask your hand in marriage.
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