There was silence while the breakfast things were cleared away, and the
window was thrown wide to the full morning sun. It broke through the
branches of pine and cedar and juniper; it made translucent the leaves of
the maples; it shimmered on Fleda's brown hair as she pulled a rose from
the bush at the window, and gave it to the forlorn creature in the grey
"linsey-woolsey" dress and the loose blue flannel jacket, whose skin was
coarsened by outdoor life, but who had something of real beauty in the
intense blue of her eyes. She had been a very comely figure in her best
days, for her waist was small, her bosom gently and firmly rounded, and
her hands were finer than those of most who live and work much in the
open air.
"You said there was something you wished to tell me," said Fleda, at
last.
The woman gazed slowly round at the three, as though with puzzled appeal.
There was the look of the Outlander in her face; of one who had been
exiled from familiar things and places. In manner she was like a child.
Her glance wandered over the faces of the two women, then her eyes met
those of the Ry, and stayed there.
"I am old and I have seen many sorrows," said Gabriel Druse, divining
what was in her mind. "I will try to understand.
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