A fortnight went by with no advantage. Pani never left her charge alone. The rambles in the woods were given up, and the girl's heart almost died within her for longing. She helped poor Margot nurse her children, and if Marsac came on a generous errand they surrounded her and swarmed over her. He could have killed them with a good will. She would not go out on the river nor join the girls in swimming matches nor take part in dances. Sometimes with Pani she spent mornings in the minister's study, and read aloud or listened to him while his wife sat sewing.
"You are not easily tempted," said the good wife one day. "It is no secret that this young trader, M. Marsac, is wild for love of you."
"But I do not like him, how then could I give him love?" and she glanced out of proud, sincere eyes, while a soft color fluttered in her face.
The demon within him that Louis Marsac called love raged and rose to white heat. If he could even carry her off! But that would be a foolish thing. She might be rescued, and he would lose the good opinion of many who gave him a flattering sympathy now.
So the weeks went on. The boats were loaded with provision, some of them started on their journey. He came one evening and found Jeanne and her protector sitting in their doorway. Jeanne was light-hearted. She had heard he was to sail to-morrow.
"I have come to bid my old playmate and friend good-by," and there was a sweet pathos in his voice that woke a sort of tenderness in the girl's heart, for it brought back a touch of the old pleasant days before he had really grown to manhood, when they sat under her oak and listened to Pani's legendary stories.
"Say Louis just once. It will be a bit of music to which I shall sail up the river."
The tone was clear and no warmth penetrated it. He could see her face distinctly in the moonlight and it was passive in its beauty.
"Thou hast not forgiven me. If I knelt--"
"Nay!" she sprang up and stood at Pani's back. "There is nothing to kneel for. When you are away I shall strive to forget your insistence--"
"And remember that it sprang from love," he interrupted. "Jeanne, is your heart of marble that nothing moves it? There are curious stories of women who have little human warmth in them--who are born of strange parents."