“But no one must give up dancing,” urged Maria.

They arranged for her in spite of protest, however.  Rice muffled her in a shawl, Mademoiselle Saucier sat down at her right side and Peggy Morrison at her left, and the next dance began.

Maria Jones had repressed and nestling habits.  She curled herself into a very small compass in the easy gallery chair, and looked off into the humid mysteries of the June night.  Colonel Menard’s substantial slave cabins of logs and stone were in sight, and up the bluff near the house was a sort of donjon of stone, having only one door letting into its base.

“That’s where Colonel Menard puts his bad Indians,” said Peggy Morrison, following Maria’s glance.

“It is simply a little fortress for times of danger,” said Mademoiselle Saucier, laughing.  “It is also the colonel’s bureau for valuable papers, and the dairy is underneath.”

“Well, you French understand one another’s housekeeping better than we English do; and may be the colonel has been explaining these things to you.”

“But are there any savage men about here now?”

“Oh, plenty of them,” declared Peggy.  “We have some Pottawatomies and Kickapoos and Kaskaskias always with us,—­like the poor.  Nobody is afraid of them, though.  Colonel Menard has them all under his thumb, and if nobody else could manage them he could.  My father says they will give their furs to him for nothing rather than sell them to other people.  You must see that Colonel Menard is very fascinating, but I don’t think he charms Angelique as he does the Indians.”

Mademoiselle Saucier’s smile excused anything Peggy might say.  Maria thought this French girl the most beautiful woman she had ever seen.  The waist of her clinging white gown ended under the curve of her girlish breasts, and face, neck, and arms blossomed out with the polish of flower-petals.  Around her throat she wore gold beads suspending a cross.  Her dark hair, which had an elusive bluish mist, like grapes, was pinned high with a gold comb.  Her oval face was full of a mature sympathy unusual in girls.  Maria had thought at first she would rather be alone on the gallery, but this reposeful and tender French girl at once became a necessity to her.

“Peggy,” said Angelique, “I hear Jules Vigo inquiring for you in the hall.”

“Then I shall take to the roof,” responded Peggy.

“Have some regard for Jules.”

“You may have, but I shan’t.  I will not dance with a kangaroo.”

“Do you not promise dances ahead?” inquired Maria.

“No, our mothers do not permit that,” answered Angelique.  “It is sometimes best to sit still and look on.”

“That means, Miss Jones,” explained Peggy, “that she has set a fashion to give the rest of the girls a chance.  I wouldn’t be so mealy-mouthed about cutting them out.  But Angelique has been ruined by waiting so much on her tante-gra’mere.  When you bear an old woman’s temper from dawn till dusk, you soon forget you’re a girl in your teens.”