"Did you love your husband?" inquired Marie.

"We always love our husbands, madame. Mynheer Bronck was very good to
me."

"You have never told me much of Monsieur Bronck, Antonia."

"I don't like to speak of him now, madame. It makes me shiver."

"You are not afraid of the dead?"

"I was never afraid of him living. I regarded him as a father."

"But one's husband is not to be regarded as a father."

"He was old enough to be my father, madame. I was not more than sixteen,
besides being an orphan, and Mynheer Bronck was above fifty, yet he
married me, and became the best husband in the colony. He was far from
putting me in such states as Mynheer Van Corlaer does."

"The difference is that you love Monsieur Corlaer."

"Do not speak that word, madame."

"Would you have him marry another woman?"

"Yes," spoke Antonia in a stoical voice, "if that pleased him best. I
should then be driven to no more voyages. He followed me to New
Amsterdam; and I ventured on a long journey to Boston, where I had
kinspeople, as you know. But there I must have broken down, madame, if I