“Monseigneur,” the girl began their interview, “I have come to New France.”
“The reverend father cannot be thinking of Madame Bourdon: Madame Bourdon was the best of duennas on the voyage.”
Laval shook his chin, and for reply rested a glance upon his cousin’s attendant as a type of the company she had kept on shipboard. The attendant was a sedate and pretty young girl, whose black hair looked pinched so tightly in her cap as to draw her eyebrows up, while modesty hung upon her lashes and drew her lids down. The result was an unusual expanse of veined eyelid.
“If you mean Louise Bibelot,” the young lady responded, “she is my foster-sister. Her mother nursed me. Louise bears papers from the curé of her parish to strangers, but she should hardly need such passports to the head of our house.”
“In brief, daughter,” said Laval, passing to the point, “what brings you to this savage country--fit enough to be the arena of young men, or of those who lay self upon the altar of the Church, but most unfit for females tenderly brought up to enjoy the pleasures of the world?”
“Has my bringing-up been so tender, monseigneur? I have passed nearly all my years an orphan in a convent.”
“I came to appeal against your successor in the estates.”
“My successor in the estates has nothing to do with you.”
“Well, and has he not made a suitable marriage for you?”
“I do not wish him to make any marriage for me. I refused all the suitors he selected, and that is what determined him to marry me to the last one.”
“You are deeply prejudiced against marriage?”
“This must be why you come with the king’s girls to the marriage market.”
“The court of Louis,” pursued Laval, “would furnish a better mate for you than any wild coureur de bois on the St. Lawrence.”
“I have not come to any marriage market,” she stammered.
“You are in the marriage market, Mademoiselle Laval. His Majesty, in his care for New France, sends out these girls to mate with soldiers and peasants here. It is good, and will confirm the true faith upon the soil. What I cannot understand is your presence among them.”
“So, being at a loss, you took shipping to the ends of the earth?”
“Other women of good families have come out here.”
“As holy missionaries: as good women should come. Do you intend leading such a life of self-sacrifice? Is that your purpose?” said Laval, penetrating her with his glance.