“You!” exclaimed Edith, her surprise getting the better of her sadness.  “Your mother would surely never consent to your being a servant?”

“My mother?” muttered Telie,—­“I have no mother,—­no relations.”

“What!  Mr. Bruce is not then your father?”

“No,—­I have no father.  Yes,—­that is, I have a father; but he has,—­he has turned Indian.”

These words were whispered rather than spoken, yet whispered with a tone of grief and shame that touched Edith’s feelings.  Her pity was expressed in her countenance, and Telie, reading the gentle sympathy infused into every lovely feature, bent over the hand she had clasped, and touched it with her lips.

“I have told you the truth,” she said, mournfully:  “one like me should not be ashamed to be a servant.  And so, lady, if you will take me, I will go with you and serve you; and poor and ignorant as I am, I can serve you,—­yes, ma’am,” she added, eagerly, “I can serve you more and better than you think,—­indeed, indeed I can.”

“Alas, poor child,” said Edith, “I am one who must learn to do without attendance and service.  I have no home to give you.”

“I have heard it all,” said Telie; “but I can live in the woods with you, till you have a house; and then I can work for you, and you’ll never regret taking me,—­no, indeed, for I know all that’s to be done by a woman in a new land, and you don’t; and, indeed, if you have none to help you, it would kill you, it would indeed:  for it is a hard, hard time in the woods, for a woman that has been brought up tenderly.”

“Alas, child,” said Edith, perhaps a little pettishly, for she liked not to dwell upon such gloomy anticipations, “why should you be discontented with the home you have already?  Surely, there are none here unkind to you?”

“No,” replied the maiden, “they are very good to me, and Mr. Bruce has been a father to me.  But then I am not his child, and it is wrong of me to live upon him, who has so many children of his own.  And then my father—­all talk of my father; all the people here hate him, though he has never done them harm, and I know,—­yes, I know it well enough, though they won’t believe it,—­that he keeps the Indians from hurting them; but they hate him and curse him; and oh!  I wish I was away, where I should never hear them speak of him more.  Perhaps they don’t know anything about him at the Falls, and then there will be nobody to call me the white Indian’s daughter.”

“And does Mr. Bruce, or his wife, know of your desire to leave him?”

“No,” said Telie, her terrors reviving; “but if you should ask them for me, then they would agree to let me go.  He told the Captain,—­that’s Captain Forrester,—­he would do any thing for him; and indeed he would, for he is a good man, and he will do what he says.”

“How strange, how improper, nay, how ungrateful then, if he be a good man,” said Edith, “that you should wish to leave him and his kind family, to live among persons entirely unknown.  Be content, my poor maid.  You have little save imaginary evils to affect you.  You are happier here than you can be among strangers.”