ta in the old comfortable parlor of his city
home.

The sudden advent of peace had opened the seas to commerce, and a fleet
of long-shut-up merchantmen were rapidly loading at the quays of the
Friponne as well as at those of the Bourgeois, with the products of the
Colony for shipment to France before the closing in of the St. Lawrence
by ice. The summer of St. Martin was lingering soft and warm on the
edge of winter, and every available man, including the soldiers of the
garrison, were busy loading the ships to get them off in time to escape
the hard nip of winter.

Dame Rochelle sat near the window, which to-day was open to the balmy
air. She was occupied in knitting, and occasionally glancing at a volume
of Jurieu's hard Calvinistic divinity, which lay upon the table beside
her. Her spectacles reposed upon the open page, where she had laid
them down while she meditated, as was her custom, upon knotty points
of doctrine, touching free will, necessity, and election by grace;
regarding works as a garment of filthy rags, in which publicans and
sinners who trusted in them were damned, while in practice the good
soul was as earnest in performing them as if she believed her salvation
depended exclusively thereupon.

Dame Rochelle had received a new lease of life by the return home of
Pierre Philibert. She grew radiant, almost gay, at the news of his
betrothal to Amelie de Repentigny, and although she could not lay aside
the black puritanical garb she had worn so many years, her kind face
brightened from its habitual seriousness. The return of Pierre broke
in upon her quiet routine of living like a prolonged festival. The
preparation of the great house of Belmont for his young bride completed
her happiness.

In her anxiety to discover the tastes and preferences of her young
mistress, as she already called her, Dame Rochelle consulted Amelie on
every point of her arrangements, finding her own innate sense of the
beautiful quickened by contact with that fresh young nature. She was
already drawn by that infallible attraction which every one felt in the
presence of Amelie.

"Amelie was too good and too fair," the dame said, "to become any man's
portion but Pierre Philibert's!"

The dame's Huguenot prejudices melted like wax in her presence, until
Amelie almost divided with Grande Marie, the saint of the Cevennes, the
homage and blessing of Dame Rochelle.

Those were days of unalloyed delight which she spent in superinten