"To go and leave love!" she thought. "Oh! how could he?" Then Donelle took to gazing upon Jo with the critical eyes of youth, and yet with pity. What manner of girl had Jo been? Had she always been plain? The word caused Donelle pain. It sounded disloyal to Jo; but it sent her to her mirror in the little north chamber beside Mam’selle’s. The face that looked back at Donelle puzzled her. Was it pretty? What was the matter with it? The eyes were too large, they looked hungry. The mouth, too, was queer; it did things too easily. It smiled and quivered; it turned up at the corners, it drooped down, all too easily. The nose was rather nice as noses go, but it had tiny freckles on it that you could see if you looked close. Those freckles were, in colour, something like the eyes. "I like my hair!" confessed Donelle, and she smoothed the soft, pale braids wound about her delicately poised head. "My throat is too long, but it’s white!" Then she tried on her few dresses, one after the other, and chose a heavy dark blue one. Jo had woven the material, it was very fine and warm. "I think I will take my fiddle and go up to the wood-cabin," thought Donelle, and then her face grew bright and rose-touched. But instead, Donelle went to Tom Gavot’s hut. Once outside the house, she simply could not go to the wood-cabin. She knew Alton was there, he painted constantly when he was not tramping the sunny forests or sitting with Jo and Donelle, reading in the smothering heat of the overworked stove. "Some time when he is away, then I’ll go." But oh! how she wanted to go. The very thought of Alton made her thrill. Sometimes she saw him looking at her, when Jo was bent over her loom or needles, and the look always called something out of Donelle; something that went straight to Alton and never returned! On that winter day, a still white day, Donelle carried her violin under her long fur coat; she must play to somebody, and Jo had gone to the distant town for the day. The door of Tom’s hut was closed, but a curl of smoke rose from the chimney so Donelle knocked rather formally. Tom’s step sounded inside, he took down the bar which secured the door and flung it open. His eyes were dark and his brow scowling. "Why, Tom," laughed Donelle, "who are you locking and barring out? Maybe you do not want company?" "I don’t, but I want you." "Tom, who do you call company?" "Mam’selle’s boarder, that Mr. Alton." Tom had run across Norval once or twice since his return. "Don’t you like him, Tom?" Donelle had come inside and taken a chair by the hearth, now she flung her coat aside and laid the violin on her knee. "Yes, I like him well enough, and that’s the trouble. I don’t want to like people unless there is a reason. I can’t find a reason for this man." Donelle laughed. "What is he here for anyway, Donelle?" "Why don’t you go up to his wood-cabin and see, Tom? He’s asked you." She had heard Norval do so rather insistently.