le
her father and others called him buccaneer and filibuster, and she
joyed that old William Drayton, who had ever spoken well of the young
Frenchman, laughed at their insults, saying that he was as brave,
comely, and fine-tempered a lad as he had ever met, and that the capture
of the forts was genius: "Genius and pith, upon my soul!" he said
stoutly; "and if he comes this way he shall have a right hearty welcome,
though he come to fight."

In the first excitement of Gering's return, sorry for his sufferings and
for his injured ambition, she had suddenly put her hands in his and had
given her word to marry him.

She was young, and a young girl does not always know which it is that
moves her: the melancholy of the impossible, from which she sinks in
a kind of peaceful despair upon the possible, or the flush of a deep
desire; she acts in an atmosphere of the emotions, and cannot therefore
be sure of herself. But when it was done there came reaction to Jessica.
In the solitude of her own room--the room above the hallway, from which
she had gone to be captured by Bucklaw--she had misgivings. If she had
been asked whether she loved Iberville, she might have answered no.
But he was a possible lover; and every woman weighs the possible lover
against the accepted one--often, at first, to fluttering apprehensions.
In this brief reaction many a woman's heart has been caught away.

A few days after Gering's arrival he was obliged to push on to Boston,
there to meet Phips. He hoped that Mr. Leveret and Jessica would
accompany him, but Governor Nicholls would not hear of it just yet.
Truth is, wherever the girl went she was light and cheerfulness,
although her ways were quiet and her sprightliness was mostly in her
looks. She was impulsive, but impulse was ruled by a reserve at once
delicate and unembarrassed. She was as much beloved in the town of New
York as in Boston.

Two days after Gering left she was wandering in the garden, when the
governor joined her.

"Well, well, my pretty councillor," he said--"an hour to cheer an old
man's leisure?"

"As many as you please," she answered daintily, putting her hand within
his arm. "I am so very cheerful I need to shower the surplus." There was
a smile at her lips, but her eyes were misty. Large, brilliant, gentle,
they had now also a bewildered look, which even the rough old soldier
saw. He did not understand, but he drew the hand further within his arm
and held it, there, and fo