Tante-gra’mere put this sullen slave in motion and made her bring a glass of wine for Colonel Menard.  The colonel was too politic to talk to Angelique before her elder, though she had not yet answered his proposal.  He had offered himself through her father, and granted her all the time she could require for making up her mind.  The colonel knew of her sudden decisions against so many Kaskaskians that he particularly asked her to take time.  Two dimpling grooves were cut in his cheeks by the smile which hovered there, as he rose to drink the godmother’s health, and she said,—­

“Angelique, you may leave the room.”

Angelique left the room, and he drew his chair toward the autocrat for the conference she expected.

“It is very kind of you, madame,” said Colonel Menard, “to give me this chance of speaking to you alone.”

“I do so, monsieur the colonel, because I myself have something to say.”  The little elfin voice disregarded Wachique and the page.  They were part of the furniture of the room, and did not count as listeners.

“You understand that I wish to propose for mademoiselle?”

Tante-gra’mere nodded.  “I understand that you are a man who will make a contract and conduct his marriage properly; while these Welsh and English, they lean over a gallery rail and whisper, and I am told they even come fiddling under the windows after decent people are asleep.”

“I am glad to have you on my side, madame.”

“I am not on your side, monsieur.  I am on nobody’s side.  And Angelique is on nobody’s side.  Angelique favors no suitor.  She is like me:  she would live a single life to the end of her days, as holy as a nun, with never a thought of courtship and weddings, but I have set my face against such a life for her.  I have seen the folly of it.  Here am I, a poor old helpless woman, living without respect or consideration, when I ought to be looked up to in the Territory.”

“You are mistaken, madame.  Your name is always mentioned with veneration.”

“Ah, if I had sons crowding your peltry traffic and taking their share of these rich lands, then you would truly see me venerated.  I have thought of these things many a day; and I am not going to let Angelique escape a husband, however such creatures may try a woman’s religious nature.”

“I will make myself as light a trial as possible,” suggested Colonel Menard.

“You have had one wife.”

“Yes, madame.”

“But she died.”  The tiny high voice had the thrust of an insect’s stinger.

“If she were alive, madame, I could not now have the honor of asking for Mademoiselle Angelique’s hand.”

The dimpling grooves in his cheeks did not escape tante-gra’mere’s black eyes.

“I do not like widowers,” she mused.

“Nor do I,” responded the colonel.

“Poor Therese might have been alive to-day, if she had not married you.”