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 while 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