The governor, left alone, looked at the hand that she had kissed and
said: "Well, well, I am but a fool still. Yet--a woman in a million!"
He took out his watch. "Too late," he added. "Poor lady!"

A few minutes afterwards Jessica met the abbe on his own doorstep.
Maurice Joval disappeared, and the priest and the woman were alone
together. She told him what had just happened.

"There is some mystery," she said, pain in her voice. "Tell me, has my
husband been retaken?"

"Madame, he has."

"Is he in danger?"

The priest hesitated, then presently inclined his head in assent.

"Once before I talked with you," she said, "and you spoke good things.
You are a priest of God. I know that you can help me, or Count Frontenac
would not have sent me to you. Oh, will you take me to my husband?"

If Count Frontenac had had a struggle, here was a greater. First, the
man was a priest in the days when the Huguenots were scattering to the
four ends of the earth. The woman and her husband were heretics, and
what better were they than thousands of others? Then, Sainte-Helene had
been the soldier-priest's pupil. Last of all, there was Iberville, over
whom this woman had cast a charm perilous to his soul's salvation. He
loved Iberville as his own son. The priest in him decided against the
woman; the soldier in him was with Iberville in this event--for a