“I have been afraid of it before now,” said Keefe, in the same tone.
Then he added, more gravely.
“Coral, I have brought you the braid of your hair Denis used to wear on his arm. He sent it to me before he went away with the Indians; see, there it is,” and he laid the glossy tress across her fingers.
But she shrank back from its touch.
“I don’t want it,” she said hastily. “What did you bring it to me for?”
“Are you not sorry for Denis, Coral? Can’t you imagine what pain it must have given him to part with it?”
Coral knew better than Keefe what Denis had implied by sending that tress of hair to his friend; he meant him to understand that in giving it up to him he gave up Coral to him also. Confused and agitated, she turned away her head; but Keefe did not comprehend her emotion, he was thinking less of her than of. Denis, just then.
“Are you not sorry for Denis, Coral?” he repeated.
“No,” she said, impatiently, “I did not want to make him unhappy; I cannot care for him as he wanted me to do.”
“If he were to come back perhaps you might, by and bye?” persisted Keefe, wondering how a girl, so soft-hearted as he had always thought her, could be so totally indifferent to such a strong affection as Denis felt for her.
“Do you think so?” she said firmly. “I know myself better than you know me, Keefe; and I never could.”
Her tone set Keefe’s doubts at rest. It was plain she did not love him, and it was certainly better for both that it should be so; for if the Count de Lavillon received Coral as his daughter, he would never consent to her marriage with Denis Brady.
“Well, I suppose by the time he comes back to Long Arrow you will have become a great lady, and an heiress, and gone to live with your new father, and Denis must learn to bear his fate bravely.”
She started, looking at Keefe with a frightened, eager eye, and grew very pale.
Keefe turned away his eyes, and went on resolutely.
“Nick Brady and Nelly will take you to. Toronto in Debster Brown’s schooner, and your father can meet you there.”
Nervously crumbling the bread she held in her hand, and still gazing with a beseeching expression at Keefe, she tried to speak two or three times before she could succeed.
“Must I go, Keefe?” she said, at last.
“Of course you must, Coral.”
“And won’t you come with me?”
“I would like to see you safe with your father, but I think it would be better not.”
“Better not?” she exclaimed, in her quick, impulsive way, “why not? if he welcomes me, he must welcome you; if he loves me, he must love you; for if it had not been for you he would never have seen me. You have saved my life twice; the day I fell out of the canoe, and yesterday again, for you know I would never have lived to be O’Brien’s wife.”
“Dear Coral,” said Keefe, “you speak as if it was my merit, and not my good fortune, that I was able to come to your help when you most wanted me.”
“Well, we need not talk about that now,” she said; “I want you to promise that you will come with me, if I must go away from this. How do you know what sort of man this French Count is? how can you tell that he is not hard-hearted and cruel, and will make me miserable, unless you come and see for yourself? You used to call me your little sister, and say that you loved me, and now you cast me off without a thought, and throw me on the mercy of strangers.”
“You must not talk that way, Coral. Don’t you know it is not what you or I like, is the question, but what it is right for you to do. Since you were stolen from your father, his life has been wasted in grief—you told me O’Brien said so—he has had but one hope on earth, the hope of finding you again; he is old, with no one to love him, and no one whom he can love. Don’t you long to comfort him, and make him happy?”
“If you would come too,” was all she said.
“But that cannot be. You must learn to do without me, and to love your father, better than any one in the world.”
Her rigid attitude, her averted head, her small fingers tightly interlaced were a more eloquent answer to this speech than any words. But Keefe went on steadily.
“He will be so fond of you, and so proud of you, and you’ll have new thoughts and new pleasures, and learn to know everything worth knowing, and to be clever and wise, and you’ll be so changed that when I see you I won’t know you.”
“If I thought that,” she exclaimed impetuously, “I’d never go! I don’t want to be changed; I don’t want to learn new things. Wisdom and knowledge are not happiness and love. I’ll go to my father since you say I must; but the only change that can ever come over me is to fade like that green leaf would fade, if you plucked it from the tree. I’ll wither and pine— perhaps I’ll die quickly; in no other way can I change.”
“But you must not wither, you must not pine,” said Keefe, her passionate words seeming only childish folly to him, “for if you do, when I see you again, I’ll think it is your ghost, and run away from you.”
“But will you come to see me, Keefe?”
“Sometime or other, I surely will; but there will be time enough to settle all that,” said Keefe, jumping up. “I want to see Abel Hackett to-night, and it is getting late. Take your beautiful braid of hair,” and he twisted it round her passive fingers, “I have no right to keep it, for it belongs to Denis, and I don’t want any keepsake to make me remember you, you’ll forget me far sooner than I’ll forget you.”
“Keefe!” she said keenly, “you know better!”
“Oh! you think that now; but wait till you get to Quebec, and see all the fine people there. Now I must go.”
He would not look at her; as he turned away,