"Think of the labor you will thereby put upon him," exclaimed Marie. "I speak for Monsieur Corlaer and not for myself," she added; "for by that delay I should happily keep you until summer. Besides, the priest we have here with us himself admits that the town of Montreal is little to look upon. Ville-Marie though it be named by the papists, what is it but a cluster of huts in the wilderness?"
"I was six months preparing to be wedded to Mynheer Bronck," remembered Antonia.
"And will Monsieur Corlaer return here from Montreal?"
"No, madame. He will carry me with him."
"I like him better for it," said Marie smiling, "though it pleases me ill enough."
This was Antonia's last weak revolt against the determination of her stalwart suitor. She gained a three days' delay from him by submitting to the other conditions of his journey. It amused Marie to note the varying phases of Antonia's surrender. She was already resigned to the loss of Jonas Bronck's hand, and in no slavish terror of the consequences.
"And it is true I am provided with all I need," she mused on, in the line of removing objections from Van Corlaer's way.
"I have often promised to show you the gown I wore at my marriage," said Lady Dorinda, roused from her rumination on the aromatic seed, and leaving her chair to pay this gracious compliment to the Dutch widow. "It hath faded, and been discolored by the sea air, but you will not find a prettier fashion of lace in anything made since."
She had no maid, for the women of the garrison had all been found too rude for her service. When she first came to Acadia with Claude La Tour, an English gentlewoman gladly waited on her. But now only Zélie gave her constrained and half-hearted attention, rating her as "my other lady," and plainly deploring her presence. Lady Dorinda had one large box bound with iron, hidden in a nook beyond her bed. She took the key from its usual secret place and busied herself opening the box. Marie and Antonia heard her speak a word of surprise, but the curtained bed hid her from them. The raised lid of her box let out sweet scents of England, but that breath of old times, though she always dreaded its sweep across her resignation, had not made her cry out.
She found a strange small coffer on the top of her own treasures. Its key stood in its lock, and Lady Dorinda at once turned that key, as a duty to herself. Antonia's loss of some precious casket had been proclaimed to her, but she recollected that in her second thought, when she had already laid aside the napkin and discovered Jonas Bronck's hand. Lady Dorinda snapped the lid down and closed her own chest. She rose from her place and stretched both arms toward the couch at the foot of her bed. Having reached the couch she sank down, her head meeting a cushion with nice calculation.