But all this had been gone over days before, François reflected, as he lay in the canoe floating down the river Hudson. A prisoner, with a useless and suffering body, but with brain alive and strong enough to guide his will. They did not want him. They would fain have thrown him overboard. He would be received with aversion by Michelle; yet, helpless as he was, he was having his way, and he could still smile when he thought of that.
At Fort Orange they learned that Jacob Leisler had paid the penalty of his mistaken and obdurate policy, and that by contemptible methods his enemies had rid themselves of him. The new governor was in power and the white people were again in the ascendant. Alaine, overcome with grief, and full of longing to see her friends again, heard these matters discussed, but heard indifferently. The time had passed when they could interest her. She felt a dull sense of pleasure that the first stage of the journey was over and that they would soon be nearing New York. So far she had steadfastly avoided meeting François, but soon it would be no longer possible, for they must travel in the same conveyance from New York to the French settlement.
“It will have to be, my child,” said Madam van der Deen. “You cannot avoid it, for he will be under the same roof.”
“So he has been these weeks past and I have not seen him. He must be there, yes, while he lives, while he lives. Ah, that I might have been spared this!”
“It is not so great a matter,” said the good lady, looking at her serenely.
“He is Lendert’s murderer.”
“Oh, no, that he is not.”
“It was he who ordered them to take him. Shall I ever forget it? And has he not made my life one of unutterable misery? Must I forgive him all he has made me suffer during these years? Did I not have enough to bear before that? Was it nothing that I must leave my home, be separated from my only living parent, and come to a strange land, but I must be weighted down by these heavier sorrows?”
“Seventy times seven,” returned her friend.
Alaine shook her head. “There are some things one can never forgive.”