Thinking of all this Lydia Longloy rejoiced in her new freedom with the whole strength of her trivial soul. The Puritan settlement of Grotton, near Boston, with its memories of friends and neighbors, its precise restraint and rigid formality, became merely an unpleasant remembrance to be crushed out of sight. All the strict discipline of her New England training fell from her like a cast-off garment. She learned French with rapidity, absorbing the ideas and sentiments of those among whom her lot was cast. She adopted powder and patches, fans and feathers, as though to the manner born. She acquired a deliciously arch imitation of the Marquise’s airs; and if she missed Diane’s dainty grace, her coquetry had a touch of sweet naturalness as of a child’s affectation and extravagance. Once she found that to be pious was considered essential, thereafter her piety satisfied even Anne Barroy. In the large, hospitable household one more or less made very little difference. Le Ber smiled indulgently upon what he considered his ward’s new caprice, but for him the English prisoner had no charms. There were two whose favor she never succeeded in winning: these were Madame de Monesthrol and Nanon, who quickly arrived at a very distinct perception of the situation. “Plebeian to the core,” Madame nodded her stately head sagaciously, smelling at her _flacon_ as if to keep off infection. “The little one waters a barren field. All that will count for nothing. This English girl will keep all she can get, and she is clever at getting. Yet one is young but once—can one blame her faith?” Nanon was still more outspoken in her opinion. “Bah! that crocodile blonde demoiselle. There are two words to a bargain, and our demoiselle will always be a loser, for she is of those who give lavishly with both hands; this other is a sponge who absorbs all and yields nothing in return.” CHAPTER IX. _AN OCCASION OF REJOICING._ THE existence of the colony depended upon the fur trade, and for nearly three years the Iroquois, with malicious ingenuity, had contrived to block up the main artery of commerce, the river Ottawa, thus stopping the flow of the country’s life-blood. The annual supply of beaver-skins cut off, the settlement was compelled to exist upon credit. During the preceding winter the need had been so great that the authorities were obliged to distribute the soldiers among the inhabitants to be fed. Canada had been reduced to the last extremity, her merchants and farmers were dying of hunger. But relief was at hand.