"
"Is she a heretic, then, madame?" asked the old white-headed priest, his
eyes quizzically following Fleda.
"She is not a Catholic, and she must be a heretic, that's certain," was
the reply.
"I'm not so sure," mused the priest. Smiling, he raised his hat as he
caught Fleda's eyes. He made as if to go towards her, but something in
her look held him back. He realized that Fleda did not wish to speak with
him, and that she was even hurrying away from her father, who lumbered
through the crowd as though unconscious of them all.
Presently Monseigneur Lourde saw Fleda leave the Fete and take the road
towards home. There was a sense of excitement in her motions, and he also
had seen that tremulous, embarrassed look in her eyes. It puzzled him. He
did not connect it wholly with Ingolby as Madame Thibadeau had done. He
had lived so long among primitive people that he was more accustomed to
study faces than find the truth from words, and he had always been
conscious that this girl, educated and even intellectual, was at heart as
primitive as the wildest daughter of the tepees of the North. There was
also in her something of that mystery which belongs to the universal
itinerary--that cosmopolitan something which is the native human.
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