“It is easy enough for Jeanne to put you in her prayers,” remarked the discontented father, “she hath room enough there for all New France.”
The man who had more than once sprung into the midst of hostile savages and carried their admiration by a word, now stood silent and musing. But his face expressed nothing except determination.
“You shall see her yourself,” Jacques le Ber exclaimed, with the shrewdness of a man holding present advantage, yet gauging fully his antagonist’s force. “You and I were once friends, Sieur de la Salle. I might obtain a worse match for my girl.”
“I will see her,” said La Salle, more in the manner of affirming his own wish than of accepting a concession.
He mounted the stairs, with Le Ber behind him, the Abbé Cavelier following Le Ber.
As the father expected, Tegahkouita stood as a bar in front of Jeanne’s chamber door. Slightly spreading her blanketed arms this Indian girl of peculiar gifts said slowly and melodiously in a voice tuned by much low-spoken prayer, “Mademoiselle Jeanne le Ber says, ‘Tell Sieur de la Salle I will pray for him always, but I must never see his face again.’”