“Very well,” she laughed; “I’m quite ready to air it; only I don’t know just how it’s to be done.”

“Suppose you were to tell me what happened, in your own language?”

“If Mr. Ford has told you already, as I imagine he has, I don’t see that my language can be very different from his.  All the same, I’ll try, since you want me to.”

“Just so.”

During the few minutes she took to collect her thoughts he could see sweep over her features one of those swift, light changes—­as delicate as the ripple of summer wind on water—­which transformed her in an instant from the woman of the world to the forest maid, the spirit of the indigenous.  The mystery of the nomadic ages was in her eyes again as she began her narrative, wistfully, and reminiscently.

“You see, I’d been thinking a good deal of my father and mother.  I hadn’t known about them very long, and I lived with their memory.  The Mother Superior had told me a few things—­all she knew, I suppose—­before I left the convent at Quebec; and Mr. and Mrs. Wayne—­especially Mrs. Wayne—­had added the rest.  That was the chief reason why I wanted the studio—­so that I could get away from the house, which was so oppressive to me, and—­so it seemed to me—­live with them, with nothing but the woods and the hills and the sky about me.  I could be very happy then—­painting thinge I fancied they might have done, and pinning them up on the wall.  I dare say it was foolish, but——­”

“It was very natural.  Go on.”

“And then came up all this excitement about Norrie Ford.  For months the whole region talked of nothing else.  Nearly every one believed he had shot his uncle, but, except in the villages, the sympathy with him was tremendous.  Some people—­especially the hotel-keepers and those who depended on the tourist travel—­were for law and order; but others said that old Chris Ford had got no more than he deserved.  That was the way they used to talk.  Mr. Wayne was on the side of law and order, too—­naturally—­till the trial came on; and then he began——­”

“I know all about that.  Go on.”

“My own sympathy was with the man in prison.  I used to dream about him.  I remembered what Mrs. Wayne had told me my mother had done for my father.  I was proud of that.  Though I knew only vaguely what it was, I was sure it was what I should have done, too.  So when there was talk of breaking into the jail and helping Norrie to escape, I used to think how easily I could keep any one hidden in my studio.  I don’t mean I thought of it as a practical thing; it was just a dream.”

“But a dream that came true.”