The
creature would mouth and fawn upon her, taking her cuffs and slaps, and
follow her about like a dog.
Rette tolerated the two with a bad grace, for, since the day when Maren
Le Moyne had stood at the door with her haggard beauty so wistfully
sad, her sympathies had been all with the strange girl of Grand
Portage.
Light and flitting, sparkling as an elf, full to the brim of laughter
and light, little Francette was playing the deepest game of her life.
With the cunning of a woman she was trying to woo this man back to the
joy of earth, to wind herself into his heart, and so to fill his hours
with her brightness that he would come to need her always.
So she came by day and day, and now it would be some steaming dainty
cooked at her father's hearth by her own hands, again a branch of the
fir-tree coated with ice and sparkling with a million gems, that she
brought into the dull blankness of the room, and with her there always
came a fresh sweet breath of the winter world without.
McElroy smiled at her pretty conceits, her babbling talk, her gambols,
and her gifts.
"What have you done with Loup, little one?" he asked, one day. "Does he
wait on the steps to growl at this usurper purring at your heels?"
The little maid grew pearly white and looked away at Rette fearfully,
as if at sudden loss, in danger of some betrayal.
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