"I think I understand. You want Élise restored to her friends?"
Madame's eyes slowly filled with tears that welled over the trembling lids and rolled down her cheeks. She did not try to speak. She only nodded in silent acquiescence. She sat silent for a few moments, then the trembling lips grew firm, but her voice could not be controlled.
"We ought to have done it long ago, Pierre and I. But I loved her. Pierre loved her. She was all we had." It was worse than death. Death only removes the presence, it leaves the consoling sense of possession through all eternity.
Zephyr started to speak, but Firmstone, turning to Madame, interrupted.
"You have no need to fear. Where you cannot go Élise will not."
Madame looked up suddenly. The rainbow of hope glowed softly for an instant in the tear-dimmed eyes. Then the light died out. "She will be ashamed of her hol' daddy and her hol' mammy before her gran' friends." Pierre's words came to her, laden with her own unworthiness.
The door opened and Élise and Miss Firmstone came in. Miss Firmstone took in the situation at a glance.
"You are reliable people to trust with a convalescent, aren't you? And after the doctor's warning that all excitement was to be avoided!"
"Doctors don't know everything," Zephyr exploded, in violence to his custom. Then, more in accord with it, "It does potatoes no end of good to be hilled."
Élise looked questioning surprise, as her glance fell on Madame, then on Zephyr. Her eyes rested lightly for a moment on Firmstone. There was a fleeting suggestion that quickened his pulses and deepened the flush on his face. Again her eyes were on Madame. Pity, love, glowed softly at sight of the bowed head. She advanced a step, and her hand and arm rested on Madame's shoulders. Madame shivered slightly, then grew rigid. Nothing should interfere with her duty to Élise.
Élise straightened, but her arm was not removed.
"What is it? What have you been saying?" She was looking fixedly at Firmstone. There was no tenderness in her eyes, only a demand that was not to be ignored.
Firmstone began a brief capitulation of his interview with Madame. When he told her that she was not Madame's daughter, that she was to be restored to her unknown friends, that Madame wished it, the change that came over the girl amazed him. Her eyes were flashing. Her clinched hands thrust backward, as if to balance the forward, defiant poise of her body.