r 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 Zelie 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.

"I am about to faint," said Lady Dorinda, and having parted with her
breath in one puff, she sincerely lost consciousness and la