without seeing her, in the general direction of Ellen and asked, "Are you Mees Tolliver?"
The boy regarded her, frankly, with a pleasant friendliness.
"Yes," replied Ellen, "I am Madame Shane's cousin."
In an instant, as she watched the child and faced the sharp old woman, she grasped the identity of the boy. It came to her quickly, as a revelation out of all the mystery of the past. Of course she knew all about Madame Gigon; it was the boy for whom she was not prepared. About him there could no longer be any doubt. He was Lily's child and the old story was true. It gave her a quick, inexplicable feeling of relief, as if after so many years she stood in the open, knowing at last the truth. It did not produce any shock, perhaps because she had been for so long prepared for the knowledge. So she had said without hesitation Madame Shane, just as a little while before in order to take no chance in protecting Lily, she had said Madame Shane to Miss Rebecca Schönberg.
The old woman coughed and said slowly, "I don't speak English very well any more. I'm so old. . . . I almost forget. . . . Est-ce que vous parlez français?" And then, "Asseyez vous."
Ellen simply stared at her, and in the emergency the boy, polite and eager, said in a piping voice, "She wants to know if you speak French. . . . She wants you to sit down." His English was colored by an accent which struck Ellen with a remote sense of unreality. Lily's child! Her own cousin! Speaking English as if it were a foreign tongue!
"I don't," said Ellen. "Will you tell her that I know no French?"
It was the old woman who answered in labored English. "Oh, I understand. . . . I know what you say. . . . I can no longer speak English. . . . Asseyez vous. . . . Sit down."
It was only then that Ellen understood the peering look in the eyes of the old woman. She had been sitting down, all the while. The old woman, who peered at her so earnestly, was blind.
