"How did you know?" he asked. . . . "Is Virginie Poucette here?"
"Ah, you knew me from her?" she asked.
"There was something about her--and you have it also--and the look in the
eyes, and then the lips!" he replied.
Certainly they were quite wonderful, luxurious lips, and so shapely
too--like those of Virginie.
"But how did you know I was Jean Jacques Barbille?" he repeated.
"Well, then it is quite easy," she replied with a laugh almost like a
giggle, for she was quite as simple and primitive as her sister. "There
is a photographer at Vilray, and Virginie got one of your pictures there,
and sent, it to me. 'He may come your way,' said Virginie to me, 'and if
he does, do not forget that he is my friend.'"
"That she is my friend," corrected Jean Jacques. "And what a
friend--merci, what a friend!" Suddenly he caught the woman's arm. "You
once wrote to your sister about my Zoe, my daughter, that married and ran
away--"
"That ran away and got married," she interrupted.
"Is there any more news--tell me, do you know-?"
But Virginie's sister shook her head. "Only once since I wrote Virginie
have I heard, and then the two poor children--but how helpless they were,
clinging to each other so! Well, then, once I heard from Faragay, but
that was much more than a year ago. Nothing since, and they were going
on--on to Fort Providence to spend the winter--for his health--his
lungs.
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