“You’re talking nonsense, Fanchon,” he said gravely. “I hate no one--as far as I can remember. I’m a colorless fellow, you know, and a cripple. I don’t count.” She lifted her face from her hands at that and looked at him again, her dark eyes soft, tender, almost caressing. “Why do you think of that so much?” she asked him kindly. “It hurts you all through to your soul, I see it! Yet it doesn’t matter--_ça ne fait rien_! You’re only a little lame, it is so interesting, _si distingué_.” “Thank you,” he smiled bitterly. “If you keep on, Fanchon, I shall have cause to love you in good earnest. I hate being lame.” “I know it!” Her eyes still dwelt on his with a kind of wild softness--the sylvan, fawn-like look again. “And I care--see? Yet you can’t like me! Oh, I know”--she shook her head--“I always know--because I’ve been unhappy, too.” “You?” he smiled, this time with amusement. “You seem to me a thing of thistledown and sunshine, a sprite, a nymph--anything but unhappy.” She clasped her hands on her knee, looking at him dreamily. “Ah, _mais non_, that’s because you don’t know! I’m an orphan; I had no one--until William came.” Her face softened, glowed, grew infinitely tender. “_Guillaume de mon cœur!_ Before that--I will tell you. _Maman_ died when I was two years old. She was Irish--she was born in southern California, but all her people were Irish. She was poor; she worked in a little inn near a great fruit-grower’s ranch. _Mon père_”--Fanchon made a sudden grimace--“I didn’t like him. You think that’s wicked? I didn’t love him. He was French and he made wine upon the ranch. He married the Irish girl, and I was born.” She stopped, her chin in her hand, thinking. Daniel, listening, smiled inwardly. Involuntarily his eyes lifted to the portrait of the ancestral Carter. “Shade of my ancestors!” he thought amusedly. “An Irish waitress and a French wine-maker!” But Fanchon’s voice, light and sweet and tantalizing, went on. “Papa took me to Paris after _maman_ died. He put me in a convent and left me there. That’s all. I never saw him again, though he sent money now and then. At last he died. _Voilà!_” She clenched her hands passionately. “No one loved me, no one cared whether I lived or died except the good sisters.” She leaned over and laid one hand lightly on the table, looking at him. “Do you wonder now--that I’m so wild?” “I didn’t know you were wild,” Daniel replied, smiling. “I’m sorry--poor child!” “No one else was sorry!” “Oh, yes, I think some one else must have been--besides William,” said Daniel. She drew her breath quickly, biting her lip. For a long moment she studied him; then, with a shrug, she reached for a match on the table and looked at it, turning it over in her hand. “I----” She glanced over her shoulder at him, her eyes veiled by their long lashes. “Please give me a cigarette,” she pleaded. “William didn’t want me to frighten your mother. I’m--I’m dying to smoke!”