“Mademoiselle best knows its worth,” said he, rather amused, and turning away.

The girl was still looking down; now, however, she threw after him a quick glance.

“Tenez!” said she, imperiously, and stepping toward him.  “You fancy me very ungrateful,” she continued, lifting her slender hand, and with the back of it brushing away the floating hair at her temples.  “Well, I am not, and at some time it may be that I prove it.  I do not like to owe debts; but, since I must, I will not try to cancel them with thanks.”

Mr. Raleigh bowed, but said nothing.  She seemed to think it necessary to efface any unpleasant impression, and, with a little more animation and a smile, added,—­“The Captain Tarbell told me your name, Mr. Raleigh, and that you had not been at home for thirteen years. Ni moi non plus,—­at least, I suppose it is home where I am going; yet I remember no other than the island and my”—­

And here the girl opened her eyes wide, as if determined that they should not fill with tears, and looked out over the blue and sparkling fields around them.  There was a piquancy in her accent that made the hearer wish to hear further, and a certain artlessness in her manner not met with recently by him.  He moved forward, keeping her beside him.

“Then you are not French,” he said.

“I?  Oh, no,—­nor Creole.  I was born in America; but I have always lived with mamma on the plantation; et maintenant, il y a six mois qu’elle est morte!”

Here she looked away again.  Mr. Raleigh’s glance followed hers, and, returning, she met it bent kindly and with a certain grave interest upon her.  She appeared to feel reassured, somewhat protected by one so much her elder.

“I am going now to my father,” she said, “and to my other mother.”

“A second marriage,” thought Mr. Raleigh, “and before the orphan’s crapes are”—­Then, fearful lest she should read his thought, he added,—­“And how do you speak such perfect English?”

“Oh, my father came to see us every other year, and I have written home twice a week since I was a little child.  Mamma, too, spoke as much English as French.”

“I have not been in America for a long time,” said Mr. Raleigh, after a few steps.  “But I do not doubt that you will find enjoyment there.  It will be new:  womanhood will have little like youth for you; but, in every event, it is well to add to our experience, you know.”

“What is it like, Sir?  But I know!  Rows of houses, very counterparts of rows of houses, and they of rows of houses yet beyond.  Just the toy-villages in boxes, uniform as graves and ugly as bricks”—­

“Brick houses are not such ugly things.  I remember one, low and wide, possessed of countless gables, covered with vines and shaded with sycamores; it could not have been so picturesque, if built of the marble of Paros, and gleaming temple-white through masks of verdure.”