Between Whiles

buys? 'Tis lik

ises deafeni

pend their hon

wl out like fo

sells? Alas, a

l their diamond

worthless stones

uys; he laughs

ng almost like the old feudal tenure of lands there, and a relation between the rich land-owner and his tenants wh

an eccentric old man, whose name is still to be found here and the

bits. He had gold enough, the stories say, to have bought all the land from the St. Johns to the Connecticut if he had pleased; and he had servants and horses and attire such as no governor in all the provinces could boast. He built himself a fine house out of stone, and the life he led in it was a scandal and a byword everywhere. For all that, there was not a man to be found who had not a good word to say for W

small inn on the Canadian frontier. Jeanne had a handsome but wicked face. She stood always at the bar, and served every man who came; and a great thing it was for the house, to be sure, that she had such bold black eyes, red cheeks, and a tongue even bolder than her glances. But there was not a farmer in all the north provinces who would have taken her to wife, not one, for she bore none too good a name; and men's speech about her, as soon as they had turned their backs and gone on their journeys

o wore always the costliest of embroidered coats, which it was plain some woman's hand had embroidered f

aid, the child was in a fair way to be ruined outright; and so Willan Blaycke at last came to see, and one day, in a fit of unwonted conscientiousness and wisdom, he packed the poor sobbing little fellow off to England in charge of a trusty escort, and sternly made u

his great black horse, or sitting up straight and stiff in the swinging coach with gold on the panels, which he had bought for her in Boston at a sale of the effects of one of the disgraced and removed governors of the province of Massachusetts. If there had been any roads to speak of in those days, Jeanne Dubois would have driven from one end to the oth

doubtedly a consolation to him in his last days to think that his son Willan would succeed to everything, and the Dubois blood remain still in its own muddy channel. It is evident that before he died he had come to think coldly

hocks on his return to his father's house. But he was full of ambition, and soon saw the opening which lay before him for distinction and wealth as the ultimate owner of the Blaycke estates. To this end he bent all his energies. He had had in England a good legal education; he

won what she had played for, and on the whole she had not been disappointed. As she had never loved her husband, she cared little that he did not love her; and as for the upstart of a boy with his fine airs, well, she would bide her time for that, Jeanne thought,--for it had never crossed Jeanne's mind that when her husband died she would not be still the mistress of the fine stone house and the gilt panelled coach, and have

with perfect calmness; the same impassable distance which had always been so exasperating to Jeanne was doubly so now. He treated her as

e angry woman, "I'll go back to my father a

to you the quarterly payments of your annuity. I should think it probable," he added with an irony which was not thrown away on

ings to which she had not,--and even Willan himself, who had been prepared for her probable greed, was surprised when on returning to the house late one evening he found the piazza piled high from one end to the other with her boxes. Jeanne stood by with a defiant air, superintending the cording of the last one. She anticipated some remonstrance or inquiry from Willan, and was half disappointed when he passed by, givi

doubt about its being my own, and your father'd tell you so if he was here; and the horses too. He

with excitement at the prospect of immediate freedom from the presence of the coarse creature. "The coach

that'll remind you of me, young man. You'll see me oftener than you like, at the Golden Pear. You'll have to stop there, as your father d

proaching her with a great lack of spirit. It was a sad come-down from his old air-castles for her and for himself,--he still the landlord of a shabby little inn, and Jeanne, stout and middle-aged, sitting again behind the bar as she had done fifteen years before. It was pretty hard. So long as he knew that Jeanne was living in her fine house as Mistress Blaycke he had been content, in spite of Willan Blaycke's having sternly forbidden him ever to sho

r, and she had learned much in Willan Blaycke's house. Moreover, she was a generous creature, and did

ine-seller in a small way. He had been dead now for two years, and his widow, being about to marry again, was anxious to get the young Victorine off her hands. So the story ran, and on the surface it looked probable enough. But Montreal was not a great way off from the parish of St. Urbans, in which stood Victor Dubois's inn; th

girls in her station. But somehow, nobody quite knew why, the tale of her being Jean Dubois's daughter was not believed. Suspicions

torine bore so striking a resemblance to her "Aunt Jeanne." On the other hand, this ought not to have been taken as proof any more one way than the other; for there were plenty of people who recollected very well that in the days when little Jean and Jeanne toddled about together as children, nobody but their mother could tell them apart, exce

t yet forty, and many men found her piquant and pleasing still. But all her vanity seemed now to be transferred to Victorine. It was Victorine who was to have all the fine gowns and ornaments; Victorine who must go to the dances and fêtes in costumes which were the wonder and the envy of all the girls in the region; Victorine who was to have e

ictorine Dubois at the age of eighteen, when her grandfather took her home to his house, was as well versed a young woman in the ways and the wiles of love-making as if she had been free to come and go all her life. And that this knowledge had been gained surreptitiously, in stolen moments and brief experiences at the expense of the whole of her reverence for religion, the whole of her faith in men's purity, was not poor Victorine's fault, only her misfortune; but the result was no less disastrous to her morals. She went out of the convent as complete a little hypocrite as ever told beads and repeated prayers. Only a certain sort of infantile superstitiousness of nature remained in her, and made her cling to the forms, in which, though she knew they did not m

songs which sounded better than they really were, she sang them with so much heartiness and abandon. She embroidered exquisitely, and had learned the trick of making many of the pretty and useless things at which nuns work so patiently to fill

thing that it never occurred to Jeanne how near the sill of Victorine's south window was to the stout railing of the last broad platform of the outside staircase. This railing had been built up high, and was partly roofed over, making a pretty place for pots of flowers in summer; and Victorine never looked so well anywhere as she did leaning out of her window and watering the flowers which stood there. Many a flirtation went on between this casement window and the courtyard below, where all the travellers were in the habit of standing and talking with the ostlers, and with old Victor himself, who was not the landlord to leave his ostlers to do as they liked with horses and grain,--many a flirtation, but none that meant or did any harm; for with all her wildness and love of frolic, Mademoiselle Victorine never lost her head. Deep down in her heart she had an ambition w

r to live as we live here,--to be in the bar-room with the men, and to sit alw

ine company. I had like to die of weariness more often than I

ine once ventured to say,--"surely tho

dows of the husbands they have buried. He was a good man, Willan Blaycke,--a good man; but I liked h

band. Very much she regretted that she had not been taken from the convent before this strange, free-hearted, rollicking gentleman had died. She

to thee, Aunt Jeanne," she said, "that I too mi

. Was she never to hear the end of t

de of his house, much less one no nearer than thou?" And Jeanne eyed Victorine sharply, with a suspicion which was wholly uncalled for. Nobody had ever been bold or

as he not thy husband's father, too, being

t sense of justice to her dead husband restr

r complained. Willan Blaycke treated me most fairly while he lived; and if it had not b

thee?" asked Victori

; "with his fine French cloth of black, and his white ruffles, and his l

he great house alon

ne's way. I did hear that he has now with him another of his own order, and that the two are riding all over the country, marking out the lines anew of all th

ndsome, Aunt Jeanne?"

ther and I were married there was not a woman in the provinces that did not say I had carried off the handsomest man that ever strode a

nt Jeanne? Did I not hear Father Hennepin himself saying to thee only yesterday

riests how to speak idle words to women. But what was he telling thee? How came

h thee instead of in the convent, dear aunt. Does this son of thy husband, this handsome

e he can tarry; but it is likely that he will sooner lie out in the fields than sleep under this roof, because I am here. I had looked to say my mind to him as often as he came; and that it would be a sore thing to him to see his father's wife in the bar, I know beyond a

said Victorine, slowly, "that he may come here.

one and a still more unwonted seriousnes

to be sure, if I had my rights,--thy wits are wool-gathering, I can tell thee that," cried Jeanne. "He has the pride of ten thousand devils in him. There was that in his face when I drove away from the doo

he bees steal a little sweet that ought to go into the fruit?" continued the artful girl, who did not choose that her aunt should question her any further as to the reason of her desire to see Willan Blaycke. "I remember that once Father Anselmo at the convent said to me he thought so. There was a vine of the wild grape which

rom Willan Blaycke, but it did not save Mademoiselle Victorine from a c

ight?" cried Jeanne, fiercely. "Is that the way maidens are traine

e had just said. "I said not that he told it to me in the garden; it was in the confessional that he said it. I had confessed to him the grievous sin of a horrible rage

I thought it could not be thou wert in the ga

the priests except in the chapel." And choking back an amused little laugh

she watched Victorine's shapely legs slowly vanishing up the stair.

from her chair, and began to walk rapidly up and down the floor. She pressed her hand to her forehead; she tore o

rn any man's head, and twice as c

hich had occurred to her was over-whelming.

a triumph!" she said.

she called;

," replied

went downstairs chuckling over her new secret thought. "I'll never let the child know I've thought of such a thing," she

ent window. "What a fool I was to have said anything about Father Anse