linking north by the same accursed schooner
that brought him; and Elsin Grey should go when she pleased, escorted
by a proper retinue. But I'd make no noise about it--not a word to set
tongues wagging and eyes peeping--for Elsin's sake. Lord! the silly
maid, to steer so near the breakers and destruction!

And what then? Well, I should never see her again, once she was safe
among her kin in the Canadas. And she was doubtless the fairest woman I
had ever looked upon--but light--not in an evil sense, God wot! but
prone to impulse and caprice--a kitten, soft as silk, now staring at
the world out of two limpid eyes, now frisking after breeze-blown
rose-leaves. A man may admire such a child, nay, learn to love her
dearly, in a way most innocent. But love! She did not know its meaning,
and how could she inspire it in a man of the world. No, I did not love
her--could not love a maid, unripe and passionless, and overpert at
times, flouting a man like me with her airs and vapors and her insolent
lids and lashes. Lord! but she carried it high-handed with me at times,
plaguing me, teasing, pouting when my attention wandered midway in the
pretty babble with which she condescended to entertain me. And with all
that--and after all is said--there was something in me that warmed to
her--perhaps the shadow of kinship--perhaps because of her utter
ignorance of all she prated of so wisely. Her very crudity touched the
chord of chivalry which is in all men, strung tight or loose, answering
to a touch or a blow, but always answering in some faint degree, I
think. Yet, if this is so, how could Walter Butler find it in his heart
to trouble her?

That he meant her real evil I did not credit, she being what she was.
Doubtless he hoped to find some means of ridding him of a wife no
longer loved; there were laws complacent for that sort of work. Yet,
grant him free, how could he find it in his heart to cherish passion
for a child? He was no boy--this pallid rake of thirty-five--this
melancholy squire of dames who, ere he was twenty, had left a trail in
Albany and Tryon none too savory, if wide report be credited--he and
Sir John Johnson!--as pretty a brace of libertines as one might find
even in that rotten town of London.

Well, I would send him on his business without noise or scandal, and
I'd hold a seance, too, with Mistress Elsin, wherein a curtain-lecture
should be read, kindly, gravely, but with firmness fitting!

I lay back, stretching