In the old French
house on Royal Street, with its quaint windows and Spanish
courtyard green and cool, and made musical by the plashing of the
fountain and the trill of caged birds, lived Odalie in
convent-like seclusion. Monsieur le Juge was determined no hawk
should break through the cage and steal his dove; and so, though
there was no mother, a stern duenna aunt kept faithful watch.
Alas for the precautions of la Tante! Bright eyes that search for
other bright eyes in which lurks the spirit of youth and mischief
are ever on the look-out, even in church. Dutifully was Odalie
marched to the Cathedral every Sunday to mass, and Tante Louise,
nodding devoutly over her beads, could not see the blushes and
glances full of meaning, a whole code of signals as it were, that
passed between Odalie and Pierre, the impecunious young clerk in
the courtroom.
Odalie loved, perhaps, because there was not much else to do.
When one is shut up in a great French house with a grim sleepy
tante and no companions of one's own age, life becomes a dull
thing, and one is ready for any new sensation, particularly if in
the veins there bounds the tempestuous Spanish-French blood that
Monsieur le Juge boasted of. So Odalie hugged the image of her
Pierre during the week days, and played tremulous little
love-songs to it in the twilight when la Tante dozed over her
devotion book, and on Sundays at mass there were glances and
blushes, and mayhap, at some especially remembered time, the
touch of finger-tips at the holy-water font, while la Tante
dropped her last genuflexion.
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