“It might not in another man, but in him it would be impossible. He is not as other men.”
“May I inquire, my daughter, if he ever asked you in marriage?”
“No, my father; I told you how he was situate. Besides, my guardian then wished me to marry another.”
“And you would not?”
“I did not,” I answered, with some little hauteur, for I held this was beside the matter, and a subject on which even he had no right to question me.
“Well, that can make but little difference now,” he said, after a short pause. “What does make the difference is that Louisbourg is an impossibility for you at the present. Your best course is to go on to Quebec. I shall give you letters to M. de Montcalm, who is so old and intimate a friend that I may ask him any favour. He will see that you have passage in the first fitting vessel for France. In order that you may not be subject to embarrassing surmises, I hold your best plan is to continue to style yourself Mme. de St. Just; in fact, that has now become a necessity. Once in France, you can, with the influence at your command—for I will see that M. de Montcalm furthers your desire—procure the recall of M. de Maxwell in the spring, and so realise the dream which has now led you so far astray.
“Do not think I am blaming you overmuch,” he added, quickly; “you have been led astray because you could not see as the world sees. Your heart and motive were pure, were generous, but none the less are you subject to those rules which govern so rigorously the class to which you belong, whose very existence depends on their observance. In a romance, the world would no doubt have wept over your perplexities; but in real life, it would crush you, because you have sinned against the only code it acknowledges. Your purity and faithfulness would count for nothing. Believe me, my child, I know it and its ways.”
So it was decided; and at once I began to plan with new hope for the desire of my heart; and such was the change it wrought in me that the whole world took on a new interest to my eyes.
For the first time I realised the grandeur of the river into which we had now fully entered; the sullen sweep of black water in the depths, the dance of silver over the shallows, the race of waves down the rapids between its ever-changing banks, now like imprisoning walls with great sombre pines, now open and radiant with the gold and scarlet of the maples, marshalled in order by the white lances of the slender birches.
At times Lucy and I were allowed to walk along the reaches of level sand to relieve the strain on the paddlers, where the river ran swift and strong, and when we at length gained the great stretch of the lake called Matapediac, like the river, my heart was full of the beauty and charm about me.