An outstretched arm in
front of her prevented him from stooping to kiss the child. "Stand back.
The child must not be waked," she said. "It must sleep another hour. It
has its milk at twelve o'clock. Stand aside. I won't have my child
disturbed."
"Have my child disturbed"--that was what she had said, and Jean Jacques
realized what he had to overbear. Here was the thing which must be fought
out at once.
"The child is not yours, but mine," he declared. "Here is proof--the
letter found on my Zoe when she died--addressed to me. The doctor knew.
There is no mistake."
He held out the letter for her to see. "As you can read here, my daughter
was on her way back to the Manor Cartier, to her old home at St.
Saviour's. She was on her way back when she died. If she had lived I
should have had them both; but one is left, according to the will of God.
And so I will take her--this flower of the prairie--and begin life
again."
The face Norah turned on him had that look which is in the face of an
animal, when its young is being forced from it--fierce, hungering,
furtive, vicious.
"The child is mine," she exclaimed--"mine and no other's. The prairie
gave it to me. It came to me out of the storm. 'Tis mine-mine only. I was
barren and wantin', and my man was slippin' from me, because there was
only two of us in our home. I was older than him, and yonder was a girl
with hair like a sheaf of wheat in the sun, and she kept lookin' at him,
and he kept goin' to her.
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