king to you alone."

"I do so, monsieur the colonel, because I myself have something to say."
The little elfin voice disregarded Wachique and the page. They were part
of the furniture of the room, and did not count as listeners.

"You understand that I wish to propose for mademoiselle?"

Tante-gra'mere nodded. "I understand that you are a man who will make a
contract and conduct his marriage properly; while these Welsh and
English, they lean over a gallery rail and whisper, and I am told they
even come fiddling under the windows after decent people are asleep."

"I am glad to have you on my side, madame."

"I am not on your side, monsieur. I am on nobody's side. And Angelique
is on nobody's side. Angelique favors no suitor. She is like me: she
would live a single life to the end of her days, as holy as a nun, with
never a thought of courtship and weddings, but I have set my face
against such a life for her. I have seen the folly of it. Here am I, a
poor old helpless woman, living without respect or consideration, when I
ought to be looked up to in the Territory."

"You are mistaken, madame. Your name is always mentioned with
veneration."

"Ah, if I had sons crowding your peltry traffic and taking their share
of these rich lands, then you would truly see me venerated. I have
thought of these things many a day; and I am not going to let Angelique
escape a husband, however such creatures may try a woman's religious
nature."

"I will make myself as light a trial as possible," suggested Colonel
Menard.

"You have had one wife."

"Yes, madame."

"But she died." The tiny high voice had the thrust of an insect's
stinger.

"If she were alive, madame, I could not now have the honor of asking for
Mademoiselle Angelique's hand."

The dimpling grooves in his cheeks did not escape tante-gra'mere's black
eyes.

"I do not like widowers," she mused.

"Nor do I," responded the colonel.

"Poor Therese might have been alive to-day, if she had not married you."

"Possibly, madame."

"And you have seven children?"

"Four, madame."

"On the whole, I like young men."

"Then you reject my suit?" observed the unmoved wooer.

"I do not reject it, and I do not accept it, monsieur the colonel. I
consider it."

This gracious promise of neutrality Colonel Menard carried away with him
without again seeing Angelique; and he made his way through the streets
of Kaskaskia, unconscious that his little son was following Rice