That his daughter should
marry a Frenchman--a filibustering seigneur, a Catholic, the enemy of the
British colonies, whose fellow-countrymen incited the Indians to harass
and to massacre--was not to be borne.
Besides, the Honourable Hogarth Leveret, whose fame in the colony was now
often in peril because of his Cavalier propensities, and whose losses had
aged him, could not bear that he should sink and carry his daughter with
him. Jessica was the apple of his eye; for her he would have borne all,
sorts of trials; but he could not bear to see her called on to bear them.
Like most people out of the heyday of their own youth, he imagined the
way a maid's fancy ought to go.
If he had known how much his daughter's promise to marry Gering would
cost her, he would not have had it. But indeed she did not herself guess
it. She had, with the dreamy pleasure of a young girl, dwelt upon an
event which might well hold her delighted memory: distance, difference
of race, language, and life, all surrounded Iberville with an engaging
fascination. Besides, what woman could forget a man who gave her escape
from a fate such as Bucklaw had prepared for her? But she saw the
hopelessness of the thing, everything was steadily acting in Gering's
favour, and her father's trouble decided her at last.
When Gering arrived at New York and told his story--to his credit with
no dispraise of Iberville, rather as a soldier--she felt a pang greater
than she ever had known.
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