'You know not what love is,' said Jeannette, with indescribable scorn.
'You! You! Ah, mon Baptiste, ou es-tu? But thou wilt kill
him,--kill him for his boats and silver dollars!'
'Child!' I said, startled by her fury.
'I am not a child. Je suis femme, moi!' replied Jeannette,
folding her arms with haughty grace. 'Allez!' she said, pointing
toward the door. We were dismissed. A queen could not have made a more
royal gesture.
Throughout the scene the Indian mother had not stopped her knitting.
In four days we were afloat, and the little white fort was deserted.
It was a dark afternoon, and we sat clustered on the stern of the
steamer, watching the flag come slowly down from its staff in token of
the departure of the commanding officer. 'Isle of Beauty, fare thee
well,' sang the major's fair young wife with the sound of tears in her
sweet voice.
'We shall return,' said the officers. But not one of them ever saw the
beautiful island again.
Rodney Prescott served a month or two in Florida, 'taciturn and stiff
as ever,' Archie wrote. Then he resigned suddenly, and went abroad. He
has never returned, and I have lost all trace of him, so that I cannot
say, from any knowledge of my own, how long the feeling lived,--the
feeling that swept me along in its train down to the beach-cottage
that wild night.
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