While she was nodding her head complacently over this, the first of the favors to be showered on them, Claude said, slowly, "Down the Bay is like a bad, bad place to my children; they do not wish to go, not even to ride. They go towards Digby. Biddy Ann would not go to the convent,—would she, Biddy?"
The little girl threw up her head angrily. "I hate Frenchtown, and that black spider, Agapit LeNoir."
Claude's face darkened, and his wife chuckled. Surely now there would be nothing left for the Englishman to do but to transplant them all to Boston.
"Would you not go?" asked Vesper, addressing Bidiane.
"Not a damn step," said the girl, in a fury, and, violently pushing back her chair, she rushed from the room. If this young man wished to make a French girl of her, he might go on his way. She would have nothing to do with him. And with a rebellious and angry heart at this traitor to his race, as she regarded him, she climbed up a ladder in the kitchen that led to a sure hiding-place under the roof.
Her aunt clutched her head in despair. Bidiane would ruin everything. "She's all eaten up to go to Boston," she gasped.
"I am not a rich man," said Vesper, coldly. "I don't feel able at present to propose anything further for her than to give her a year or two in a convent."
Mirabelle Marie gaped speechlessly at him. In one crashing ruin her new barn, and farming implements, the wagon and horses, and trunks full of fine clothes fell into the abyss of lost hopes. The prince had not the long purse that she supposed he would have. And yet such was her good-nature that, when she recovered from the shock, she regarded him just as kindly and as admiringly as before, and if he had been in the twinkling of an eye reduced to want she would have been the first to relieve him, and give what aid she could. Nothing could destroy her deep-rooted and extravagant admiration for the English race.
Her fascinated glance followed him as he got up and sauntered to the open door.