Angelique did not hear this little quarrel.  She was helping Rice with his sister.  His pockets were full of Maria’s medicines.  He set the bottles out, and Angelique arranged them ready for use.  They gave her a spoonful and raised her on pillows, and she rested drowsily again, grateful for the damp wind which made the others shiver.  Angelique’s sweet fixed gaze, with an unconscious focus of vital power, dwelt on the sick girl; she felt the yearning pity which mothers feel.  And this, or the glamour of dim light, made her oval face and dark hair so beautiful that Rice looked at her; and Peggy, coming from the screens, resented that look.

Peggy sat down in the window, facing them, the dormer alcove making a tunnel through which she could watch like a spider; though she lounged indifferently against the frame, and turned toward the water streets and storm-drenched half houses which the moon now plainly revealed.  The northwest wind set her teeth with its chill, and ripples of froth chased each other up the roof at her.

“The water is still rising,” remarked Peggy.

“Look, Peggy,” begged Angelique, “and see if Colonel Menard and my father are coming back with the boat.”

“It is too soon,” said Rice.

“Perhaps Colonel Menard will never come back,” suggested Peggy.  “It was a bad sign when the screech-owl screeched in the old Jesuit College.”

“But the storm is over now.  The water is not washing over the house.”

“The moon shows plenty of whitecaps.  It is rough.”

“As long as this wind lasts the water will be boisterous,” said Rice.  “But Colonel Menard no more minds rough weather than a priest carrying the sacrament.  He is used to the rivers.”

“Hear a Protestant catering to a papist,” observed Peggy.  “But it is lost on Angelique.  She is as good as engaged to Colonel Menard.  She accepted him through the window before all of us, when he came to the rescue.”

“Must I congratulate him?” Rice inquired of Angelique.  “He certainly deserves his good luck.”

“Peggy has no right to announce it so!” exclaimed Angelique, feeling invaded and despoiled of family privacy.  “It is not yet called an engagement.”

Peggy glanced at Rice Jones, and felt grateful to Heaven for the flood.  She admired him with keen appreciation.  He took his disappointment as he would have taken an offered flower, considered it without changing a muscle, and complimented the giver.

Guns began to be heard from the bluffs in answer to the bells.  Peggy leaned out to look across the tossing waste at a dim ridge of shadow which she knew to be the bluffs.  The sound bounded over the water.  From this front window of the attic some arches of the bridge were always visible.  She could not now guess where it crossed, or feel sure that any of its masonry withstood the enormous pressure.

The negroes were leaning out of their dormer window, also, and watching the nightmare world into which the sunny peninsula was changed.  When a particularly high swell threw foam in their faces they started back, but others as anxious took their places.