smooth scar of a cross! She had seen the sort of shining scar a bad burn
makes, and at thought of it she flushed, trembled, and turned her head
away, as though some one were watching her. Even in the night she
flushed and buried her face in the pillow when the thought flashed
through her mind; though when she had soaked the scarf in oil and flour
and laid it on the angry wound she had not flushed at all, was
determined, quiet, and resourceful.

That incident had made her from a girl into a woman, from a child of the
convent into a child of the world. She no longer thought and felt as she
had done before. What she did think or feel could not easily have been
set down, for her mind was one tremulous confusion of unusual thoughts,
her heart was beset by new feelings, her imagination, suddenly finding
itself, was trying its wings helplessly. The past was full of wonder and
event, the present full of surprises.

There was M'sieu' established already in Louis Trudel's place, having
been granted a lease of the house and shop by the Curte, on the part of
the parish, to which the property had been left; receiving also a gift of
the furniture and of old Margot, who remained where she had been so many
years. She could easily see Charley at work--pale and suffering still
--for the door was generally open in the sweet April weather, with the
birds singing, and the trees bursting into blossom. Her wilful
imagination traced the cross upon his breast--it almost seemed as if it
were outside upon his clothes, exposed to every eye, a shining thing all
fire, not a wound inside, for which old Margot prepared oiled linen now.

The parish was as perturbed as her own mind, for the mystery of the
stolen cross had never been cleared up, and a few still believed that
M'sieu' had taken it. They were of those who kept hinting at dark things