her
eyes half closed, and with a hurried and passionate gesture she rose from
her chair, thrust from her the scarlet blooms, and with one lithe movement
of her body put between her and the window the heavy writing table. The
minister laid by his sum in arithmetic.

"Ha, Hugon, dog of a trader!" he cried. "Come in, man. Hast brought the
skins? There's fire-water upon the table, and Audrey will be kind. Stay to
dinner, and tell us what lading you brought down river, and of your
kindred in the forest and your kindred in Monacan-Town."

The man at the window shrugged his shoulders, lifted his brows, and spread
his hands. So a captain of Mousquetaires might have done; but the face was
dark-skinned, the cheek-bones were high, the black eyes large, fierce, and
restless. A great bushy peruke, of an ancient fashion, and a coarse,
much-laced cravat gave setting and lent a touch of grotesqueness and of
terror to a countenance wherein the blood of the red man warred with that
of the white.

"I will not come in now," said the voice again. "I am going in my boat to
the big creek to take twelve doeskins to an old man named Taberer. I will
come back to dinner. May I not, ma'm'selle?"

The corners of the lips went up, and the thicket of false hair swept the
window sill, so low did the white man bow; but the Indian eyes were
watchful. Audrey made no answer; she stood with her face turned away and
her eyes upon the door, measuring her chances. If Darden would let her
pass, she might reach the stairway and her own room before the trader
could enter the house. There were bolts to its heavy door, and Hugon might
do as he had done before, and talk his heart out upon the wrong side of
the wood. Thanks be! lying upon her bed and pressing the pillow over her
ears, she did not have to hear.

At the trader's announcement that his present path led past the house,
she ceased her stealthy progress toward her own demesne, and waited, with
her back to the window, and her eyes upon one long ray of sunshine that
struck high against the wall.

"I will come again," said the voice without, and the apparition was gone
from the window. Once more blue sky and rosy bloom spanned the opening,
and the sunshine lay in a square upon the floor. The girl drew a long
breath, and turning to the table began to arrange the papers upon it with
trembling hands.

"'Sixteen thousand pounds of sweet-scented, at ten shillings the
hundredweight; for marriage by banns,