erful as getting married. He had received a promise of marriage
from Jessica, and he was also soon to start with William Phips for the
Spaniards' country. His return to New York with the news of the capture
of the Hudson's Bay posts brought consternation. There was no angrier
man in all America than Colonel Richard Nicholls; there was perhaps
no girl in all the world more agitated than Jessica, then a guest at
Government House. Her father was there also, cheerfully awaiting her
marriage with Gering, whom, since he had lost most traces of Puritanism,
he liked. He had long suspected the girl's interest in Iberville; if
he had known that two letters from him--unanswered--had been treasured,
read, and re-read, he would have been anxious. That his daughter should
marry a Frenchman--a filibustering seigneur, a Catholic, the enemy of
the British colonies, whose fellow-countrymen incited the Indians to
harass and to massacre--was not to be borne.

Besides, the Honourable Hogarth Leveret, whose fame in the colony was
now often in peril because of his Cavalier propensities, and whose
losses had aged him, could not bear that he should sink and carry his
daughter with him. Jessica was the apple of his eye; for her he would
have borne all, sorts of trials; but he could not bear to see her called
on to bear them. Like most people out of the heyday of their own youth,
he imagined the way a maid's fancy ought to go.

If he had known how much his daughter's promise to marry Gering would
cost her, he would not have had it. But indeed she did not herself guess
it. She had, with the dreamy pleasure of a young girl, dwelt upon an
event which might well hold her delighted memory: distance, difference
of race, language, and life, all surrounded Iberville with an engaging
fascination. Besides, what woman could forget a man who gave her escape
from a fate such as Bucklaw had prepared for her? But she saw the
hopelessness of the thing, everything was steadily acting in Gering's
favour, and her father's trouble decided her at last.

When Gering arrived at New York and told his story--to his credit with
no dispraise of Iberville, rather as a soldier--she felt a pang greater
than she ever had known. Like a good British maid, she was angry at
the defeat of the British, she was indignant at her lover's failure and
proud of his brave escape, and she would have herself believe that she
was angry at Iberville. But it was no use; she was ill-content whi