“Entrez, Messieurs.”

M. Riel’s countenance speedily lost its gloom, and, respectfully touching his hat, he said: 

“Oui, Mademoiselle, avec le plus grand plaisir.”  Tripping lightly ahead she announced the two strangers, and then returned, going to the bars where the cows were lowing, waiting to be milked.  The persistent sportsman had not by any means made up his mind to desist in the wooing.

“The colt shies,” he murmured, “when she first sees the halter.  Presently she becomes tractable enough.”  Then, while he sat waiting for the evening meal, blithely through the hush of the exquisite evening came the voice of the girl.  She was singing from La Claire Fontaine: 

   “A la claire fontaine
    Je m’allait promener,
    J’ai trouve l’eau si belle
    Que je me suis baigne.”

Her song ended with her work, and as she passed the strangers, with her two flowing pails of yellow milk, Riel whispered softly, as he touched her sweet little hand: 

“Ah, ma petite amie!”

The same flash came in her eyes, the same proud blood mantled through the dusk of her cheek, but she restrained herself.  He was a guest under her father’s roof, and she would suffer the offence to pass.  The persistent gallant was more crest-fallen by this last silent rebuke, than by the first with its angry words.  The first, in his vanity, he had deemed an outburst of petulance, instead of an expression of personal dislike, especially as the girl had so suddenly calmed herself and extended hospitalities.  He gnashed his teeth that a half-breed girl, in an obscure village, should resent his advances; he for whom, if his own understanding was to be trusted, so many bright eyes were languishing.  At the evening meal he received courteous, kindly attention from Marie; but this was all.  He related with much eloquence all that he had seen in the big world in the East during his school days, and took good care that his hosts should know how important a person he was in the colony of Red River.  To his mortification he frequently observed in the midst of one of his most self-glorifying speeches that the girl’s eyes were abstracted, as if her imagination were wandering.  He was certain she was not interested in him, or in his exploits.

“Can she have a lover?” he asked himself, a keen arrow of jealousy entering at his heart, and vibrating through all his veins.  “No, this cannot be.  She said in her musings on the prairie that she had nobody who would sing a sad song if she were to go to the South.  Stop!  She may love, and not find her passion requited.  I shall stay about here some days, upon some pretext, and I shall see what is in the wind.”

The next morning, when breakfast was ended, he perceived Marie rush to the window, and then hastily, and with a dainty coyness withdraw her head from the pane.  Simultaneously he heard a sprightly tune whistled, as if by some glad, young heart that knew no care.  Looking now, he saw a tall, well-formed young whiteman, a gun on his back, and a dog at his heels, walking along the little meadow-path toward the cottage.