spin or
knit or sew when he is by; I must needs watch every motion of his if he
once fastens my eyes."

"I have noticed he draws one's heart," laughed Marie.

"He does. It is like witchcraft. He sets me afloat so that I lose my
feet and have scarce any will of my own. I never was so disturbed by my
husband Jonas Bronck," complained Antonia.

"Did you love your husband?" inquired Marie.

"We always love our husbands, madame. Mynheer Bronck was very good to
me."

"You have never told me much of Monsieur Bronck, Antonia."

"I don't like to speak of him now, madame. It makes me shiver."

"You are not afraid of the dead?"

"I was never afraid of him living. I regarded him as a father."

"But one's husband is not to be regarded as a father."

"He was old enough to be my father, madame. I was not more than sixteen,
besides being an orphan, and Mynheer Bronck was above fifty, yet he
married me, and became the best husband in the colony. He was far from
putting me in such states as Mynheer Van Corlaer does."

"The difference is that you love Monsieur Corlaer."

"Do not speak that word, madame."

"Would you have him marry another woman?"

"Yes," spoke Antonia in a stoical voice, "if that pleased him best. I
should then be driven to no more voyages. He followed me to New
Amsterdam; and I ventured on a long journey to Boston, where I had
kinspeople, as you know. But there I must have broken down, madame, if I
had not met you. It was fortunate for me that the English captain
brought you out of your course. For mynheer set out to follow me there.
And now he has come across the wilderness even to this fort!"

"Confess," said Marie, giving her a little shake, "how pleased you are
with such a determined lover!"

But instead of doing this, Antonia burst again into frenzied sobbing and
hugged her comforter.

"O madame, you are the only person I dare love in the world!"

Marie smoothed the young widow's damp hair with the quieting stroke
which calms children.

"Let mother help thee," she said; and neither of them remembered that
she was scarcely as old as Antonia. In love and motherhood, in military
peril, and contact with riper civilizations, to say nothing of inherited
experience, the lady of St. John had lived far beyond Antonia Bronck.

"Your husband made you take an oath not to wed again,--is it so?"

"No, madame, he never did."

"Yet you told me he left you his money?"

"Yes. He was very good to me. For