d perforated it in his short, gay life of
adventure and anarchy; also partly because there was no coquetry needed
to interest Jean Jacques. If he was interested it was not necessary to
interest anyone else, nor was it expedient to do so, for the biggest
fish in the net on the Antoine was the money-master of St. Saviour's.

Carmen had made up her mind from the first to marry Jean Jacques, and
she deported herself accordingly--with modesty, circumspection and
skill. It would be the easiest way out of all their difficulties. Since
her heart, such as it was, fluttered, a mournful ghost, over the Place
d'Armes, where her Gonzales was shot, it might better go to Jean Jacques
than anyone else; for he was a man of parts, of money, and of looks, and
she loved these all; and to her credit she loved his looks better
than all the rest. She had no real cupidity, and she was not greatly
enamoured of brains. She had some real philosophy of life learned in a
hard school; and it was infinitely better founded than the smattering of
conventional philosophy got by Jean Jacques from his compendium picked
up on the quay at Quebec.

Yet Jean Jacques' cruiser of life was not wholly unarmed. From his
Norman forebears he had, beneath all, a shrewdness and an elementary
alertness not submerged by his vain, kind nature. He was quite a good
business man, and had proved himself so before his father died--very
quick to see a chance, and even quicker to see where the distant, sharp
corners in the road were; though not so quick to see the pitfalls, for
his head was ever in the air. And here on the Antoine, there crossed his
mind often the vision of Carmen Dolores and himself in the parish of St.
Saviour's, with the daily life of the Beau Cheval revolving about him.
Flashes of danger warned him now and then, just at the beginning of the
journey, as it were; just before he had found it necessary to become
her champion against the captain and his calumnies; but they were of the
instant only. But champion as he became, and worshipping as his manner
seemed, it all might easily have been put down to a warm, chivalrous,
and spontaneous nature, which had not been bitted or bridled, and he
might have landed at Quebec without committing himself, were it not for
the fact that he was not to land at Quebec.

That was the fact which controlled his destiny. He had spent many, many
hours with the Dona Dolores, talking, talking, as he loved to talk, and
only saving h