There was not a happier heart in all St. Louis, perhaps, than that of Barbe Gardepier. If her marriage had not been altogether satisfactory, she would not at first confess it to her sister. New Orleans was very different from St. Louis. Pleasures were not so simple. There were cabarets where men spent evenings drinking and playing games, betting and losing. And there were balls where men never took their wives, but danced with beautiful creole girls who were outside the pale of their own people. True, the wives visited each other and gossiped about this and that, and went to church often, at times finding a choice morsel of scandal to discuss. She had longed for her own old home, and as the weeks and months went on she seemed to grow away from her husband rather than nearer to him. He had not appeared to mind the baby’s death much, while it had almost broken her heart. She had been bitterly disappointed in the non-success of her second plan to visit home, as she still called the old town. “It is too severe a journey,” her husband had said decisively. “And it is a dull little place at the best. I would not stir a step if I were not compelled to.” For all that he seemed to find plenty to amuse himself with. Coming down the river, he had made a stay at Kaskaskia, where pretty girls abounded. When he did return there was a little daughter to claim his love; but he was not fond of babies. Girls were all right enough budding into womanhood, with a hundred seductive charms. Until then, the nursery and the convent. Barbe might have found amusement and danced with the gayest, but she soon learned that her husband was jealous and could say very bitter things. So she kept to her little girl and poured out all her love on this sweet object. There were moments when she could not even bear to think that Jean Gardepier was her father. One night he was brought home with a bad stab wound, the result of a quarrel. It did not seem dangerous at first, but he fumed and fretted and would go out too soon. He was quite ill again, and then it was found that the wound had penetrated his lung, and, after a few hemorrhages, he dropped quietly out of life. There was not much money left, but enough to take her home and keep her for awhile, and though she tried hard to moderate her joy at the thought, in her inmost heart she felt it was partly the sense of freedom. And Gaspard Denys had been first to welcome her. The years had touched him lightly. His face had the same strong kindliness that had made her feel in her girlhood that he was a man to be trusted anywhere, a man one could rely upon. She had learned many things in these few years of her married life. She had had a much wider experience than Madame Renaud with sons-in-law and daughter-in-law and the many years since she became a bride.