"_Madame la Princesse_, you, too, love your country!"
His exclamation was so enthusiastic, so heartfelt, there was in it such a world of commiseration for the titled lady before him, that there immediately flashed before each one present the unhappy life of the poor princess in exile. The boy had started a wave of sympathy flowing from one to another of the group, and in some confusion they all moved away.
Gerald wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and went on with the programme of patriotic selections that the impatient children were obliged to go through before they could have the cakes and fireworks.
After the fizzing and bursting noises were over, I said, regretfully, "Gerald, I must go to Paris to-morrow."
"I have been expecting this," he said, with dogged resignation. "When you are gone, Miss Canada, I shall have no one to talk to me about America."
I had grown to love the boy for his high qualities of mind and soul, and my voice faltered as I murmured, "Do not give up,--fight the good fight."
"Of faith," he added, gravely, "looking forward to what is to come."
It seemed to me that an old man stood pressing my hand--an old man with life's experience behind him. My heart ached for the lad, and I hurried into the house.
"Good-bye," I said, coldly, to my hostess.
"Good-bye, a pleasant journey," she responded, with equal coldness.
"If you do not take that boy of yours home, you will lose him," I murmured.
I thought my voice was low, but it was not low enough to escape the ears of the princess, who was standing beside her.
Mrs. Greyshield turned away, and the princess's lips moved almost imperceptibly in the words, "What is the use?"
"The boy is dying by inches!" I said, indignantly.
"Better dead than like those--" she said, with her bitter smile, nodding toward the chattering cosmopolitan crowd beyond us.
I echoed the boy's words: "You, too, are a patriot!"
"I was," she said, gravely, and sauntered away.
I went unhappily to Paris. Would that another stranger could chance along, to whom the boy might unburden his heart,--his noble heart, filled not only with dreams of military glory, but of plans for the protection of the weak and helpless among his countrymen!
A week later a telegram from the princess summoned me to Orléans. To my surprise, she met me on the staircase of Mrs. Greyshield's house.