reluctant, to look at the sick girl again, after the loss of her
beautiful hair. It was still daylight. The change in her appearance
struck me as singular. Her face before had a look of suffering and
trouble, making it almost old, charming as it was; now she had the
aspect of quite a young girl, scarcely touching upon womanhood. Her hair
had not been shorn off closely--the woman could not manage that--and
short, wavy tresses, like those of a young child, were curling about her
exquisitely-shaped head. The white temples, with their blue, throbbing
veins, were more visible, with the small, delicately-shaped ears. I
should have guessed her age now as barely fifteen--almost that of a
child. Thus changed, I felt more myself in her presence, more as I
should have been in attendance upon any child. I scanned her face
narrowly, and it struck me that there was a perceptible alteration; an
expression of exhaustion or repose was creeping over it. The crisis of
the fever was at hand. The repose of death or the wholesome sleep of
returning health was not far off. Mother Renouf saw it as well as
myself.




CHAPTER THE SIXTH.

WHO IS SHE?


We sat up again together that night, Tardif and I. He would not smoke,
lest the scent of the tobacco should get in through the crevices of the
door, and lessen the girl's chance of sleep; but he held his pipe
between his teeth, taking an imaginary puff now and then, that he might