"I would not kneel to the Virgin, nor make the sign of the cross, if the priests should break every bone in my body," she protested warmly, evidently in answer to some appeal from the lad, whose dark, piercing eyes were fixed upon her through the gloom.
"You should not speak so positively," he answered. "No one knows what he would do until he is tried."
"But I do know, René. When Uncle Godfrey let the blood from my arm last month, did I not hold still without a whimper; and did not Antoine say I bore the pain like a martyr?"
"Then you had my mother to sit by and hold your hand and my father to kiss you and call you a brave little maid when it was over. That was nothing, Eglantine."
"Then why did you turn white at sight of the blood, and let Nannette fetch you a glass of water, like a girl? I was cool enough to mark that, Master René."
"You know very well that was because I could not bear to see you hurt." A sudden leap of the dying flames showed a swift leap of scarlet into the olive cheek. "It is hardly fair to taunt me with that, Eglantine."
Having grown up in a Huguenot family in the seventeenth century, Eglantine and René try to remain faithful to God when persecution breaks out in France.
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