"Poor, poor girl! Poor Captain de Croix! Oh, it is all so sad, so unutterably sad to me! I knew them both so well, Monsieur," and she rested her bowed head upon one hand, staring out into the night, and speaking almost as if to herself alone; "yet I never dreamed that he was a nobleman of France, or that he had married Marie Faneuf.

She was so sweet a girl then,--and now to be buried alive in that wilderness! Think you that he truly loved her ?" "I almost have faith that he did, Mademoiselle," I answered gravely.
"He was greatly changed from his first sight of her face, though he was a difficult man to gauge in such matters.

There was a time when I believed him in love with you." She tossed her head.
"Nay," she answered, "he merely thought he was, because he found me hard to understand and difficult of conquest; but 't was little more than his own vanity that drew him hither.

I trust it may be the deeper feeling that has taken him back now in face of death to Marie." "You have indeed proved hard to understand by more than one," I ventured, for in spite of her graciousness the old wound rankled.

"It has puzzled me much to understand how you so gaily sent me forth to a mission that might mean death, to save this Captain de Croix." It was a foolish speech, and she met it bravely, with heightened color and a flash of dark eyes.
"'T was no more than the sudden whim of a girl," she answered quickly, "and regretted before you were out of sight.