I AM DIRECTED INTO A NEW PATH
The following morning, when we resumed our quiet way in the canoe, le pére Jean asked, “Well, my daughter, did any light come to you through the darkness?”
“No, my father, but I have found a little quiet.”
“That is much. Now I shall ask you to listen to me patiently, for I may say much with which you will not agree, but you will trust me that I only say that which I know to be best. We have every reason to believe a serious descent will be made on Louisbourg in the spring, so that, apart from any other reason, your presence in a town which will in all probability suffer a bombardment, would be unwise and undesirable in the last degree. You have no idea of what war actually means; it is a horror that would haunt you to your dying day.”
“But, my father, in that case I should at least be by his side. That in itself would mean everything to us both.”
“That is a point I had not intended to touch on, my daughter. I know the world. I know that men, banished to such exile as that in which M. de Maxwell has lived, change much with the years. Think how you have changed yourself, in happier surroundings than he has known. Think what new connections he may have formed. Did you never think that he—”
“Oh, my father, what would you tell me? Do you know M. de Maxwell?”
“I have never been in Louisbourg,” he answered, somewhat coldly, as if my earnestness had hurt him.
“But you do not mean that he may be married?”
“He may be. It would surely not be unnatural.”