When you
told me about your home it was like something that I had often
seen before. I shall be dreaming about it next!"
Beverley cross-questioned her from every possible point of view;
he was fascinated with the mystery; but she gave him nothing out
of which the least further light could be drawn. A half-breed
woman, it seemed, had been her Indian foster-mother; a silent,
grave, watchful guardian from whom not a hint of disclosure ever
fell. She was, moreover, a Christian woman, had received her
conversion from an English-speaking Protestant missionary. She
prayed with Alice, thus keeping in the child's mind a perfect
memory of the Lord's prayer.
"Well," said Beverley at last, "you are more of a mystery to me,
the longer I know you."
"Then I must grow every day more distasteful to you."
"No, I love mystery."
He went away feeling a new web of interest binding him to this
inscrutable maiden whose life seemed to him at once so full of
idyllic happiness and so enshrouded in tantalizing doubt. At the
first opportunity he frankly questioned M. Roussillon, with no
helpful result. The big Frenchman told the same meager story. The
woman was dying in the time of a great epidemic, which killed most
of her tribe. She gave Alice to M. Roussillon, but told him not a
word about her ancestry or previous life.
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