by, and kept her word. But now her
life was shaken, and all her romantic beliefs disturbed and shattered,
by this overwhelming intelligence. She was wildly, furiously jealous,
wildly, furiously angry--jealous for Alida's sake, for the baby's, for
her own. It is easy to be humble when a greater is preferred; but when
an inferior is lifted high above our heads, how can we bear it? And Miss
Lois was most jealous of all for Douglas himself--that such a man should
so stoop. She hardly knew herself that night as she harshly pulled down
the curtains, pushed a stool half across the room, slammed the door, and
purposely knocked over the fire-irons. Lois Hinsdale had never since her
birth given way to rage before (nor known the solace of it), and she was
now forty-one years old. All her life afterward she remembered that
night as something akin to a witch's revel on the Brocken, a horrible
wild reign of passion which she trembled to recall, and for which she
did penance many times in tears. "It shows the devil there is in us
all," she said to herself, and she never passed the fire-irons for a
long time afterward without an unpleasant consciousness.

The limited circle of island society suggested that Miss Lois had been
hunting the loon with a hand-net--a Northern way of phrasing the wearing
of the willow; but if the New England woman loved William Douglas, she
was not conscious of it, but merged the feeling in her love for his
child, and for the memory of Alida. True, she was seven years older than
he was: women of forty-one can answer whether that makes any difference.

On a brilliant, sparkling, clear June morning William Douglas went down
to the little Roman Catholic church and married the French girl. As he
had resigned his position in the army some time before, and as there was
a new set of officers at the fort, his marriage made little impression
there save on the mind of the chaplain, who had loved him well when he
was surgeon of the post, and had played many a game of chess with him.
The whole French population of the island, however, came to the
marriage. That was expected. But what was not expected was the presence
there of Miss Lois Hinsdale, sitting severely rigid in the first pew,
accompanied by the doctor's child--a healthy, blue-eyed little girl, who
kissed her new mamma obediently, and thought her very sweet and
pretty--a belief which remained with her always, the careless, indolent,
easy-tempered, beautiful young