"Who calls Father Nouvel?" he demanded in a mellow voice, rich in
intonations. "What, an Indian woman, monsieur! Who are you? What
means this?"

I led the woman forward. "Father Nouvel, this is Mademoiselle
Starling, an Englishwoman who was captured by the Indians. We have
traveled fast and far to find you. Can you marry us at once?"

It was badly done. I had jumbled my speech without wit or address,
like a peasant dragging his milkmaid before the village curé. The
woman may have felt my clumsiness. She dropped my hand, and curtsied
deeply to the father, and he, staring, checked the hand that he had
raised to extend to her, and bowed deeply in turn. It was a meeting,
not of priest and refugee, but of a man and woman who had known the
world. Father Nouvel was very old and his skin was wrinkled ivory, but
at this moment he wore his cassock as if it were a doublet slashed with
gold. His command was an entreaty.

"Come nearer, daughter. I wish to see your face."

She followed him close to the flaring light that poured from the
wigwam, and he looked at her as unsparingly as if she were a portrait
of paint and oil.

"I have never seen you," he decided. "Yet the name Starling,--it is
unusual, and it brings troubling memories to my mind."

The woman deliberated a moment. She was indeed a woman with wit that
did not need mine, and I felt it to be so, and I stood at one side, and
thought out my own conclusions. She looked up. "At Meudon?" she