“I said I would suggest that you sit on a chair by yourself.”

“I will, dear.  You know I always follow your suggestions.”

I felt the hand that held mine tighten its grip in a despairing squeeze.  Annabel suddenly raised the branch high above her head with both arms, and displayed Doctor Chantry’s hand and mine clasped tenderly in her lap.  She laughed until even Miss Chantry was infected, and the doctor tittered and wiped his eyes.

“Watch your brother, Miss Chantry—­don’t watch me!  You thought he was squeezing my hand—­and he thought so too!  Lazarre Williams is just out of the woods and doesn’t know any better.  But Doctor Chantry—­he is older than my father!”

“We wished to oblige you, mademoiselle,” I said.  But the poor English gentleman tittered on in helpless admiration.  He told me privately—­“I never saw another girl like her.  So full of spirits, and so frank!”

Doctor Chantry did not wear his disfiguring horn spectacles when Annabel was near.  He wrote a great deal of poetry while the blow of parting from her was hanging over him, and read it to me of mornings, deprecating my voiceless contempt.  I would hear him quarreling with a servant in the hall; for the slightest variation in his comfort engendered rages in him that were laughable.  Then he entered, red-nosed, red-eyed, and bloodlessly shivering, with a piece of paper covered by innumerable small characters.

“Good morning, my lad,” he would say.

“Good morning, Doctor Chantry,” I answered.

“Here are a few little stanzas which I have just set down.  If you have no objection I will read them.”

I must have listened like a trapped bear, sitting up and longing to get at him, for he usually finished humbly, folding his paper and putting it away in his breast.  There was reason to believe that he spent valuable hours copying all these verses for Annabel de Chaumont.  But there is no evidence that she carried them with her when she and her governess departed in a great coach all gilt and padding.  Servants and a wagon load of baggage and supplies accompanied De Chaumont’s daughter on the long journey to her Baltimore convent.

Shaking in every nerve and pale as a sheet, my poor master watched her out of sight.  He said he should not see his sister again until spring; and added that he was a fool, but when a creature of light came across his path he could not choose but worship.  His affections had been blighted by a disappointment in youth, but he had thought he might at least bask in passing sunshine, though fated to unhappiness.  I was ashamed to look at him, or to give any sign of overhearing his weakness, and exulted mightily in my youth, despising the enchantments of a woman.  Madame de Ferrier watched the departure from another side of the gallery, and did not witness my poor master’s breakdown.  She came and talked to him, and took more notice of him than I had ever seen her take before.