The poor youthful frontiersman ought to have been stronger; but he was not, and what have we to say?
As for Alice, since having a confidential talk with Adrienne Bourcier recently, she had come to realize what M.Roussillon meant when he said; "But my little girl is better than most of them, not a foolish mischief-maker, I hope." She saw through the situation with a quick understanding of what Adrienne might suffer should Rene prove permanently fickle.

The thought of it aroused all her natural honesty and serious nobleness of character, which lay deep under the almost hoydenish levity usually observable in her manner.

Crude as her sense of life's larger significance was, and meager as had been her experience in the things which count for most in the sum of a young girl's existence under fair circumstances, she grasped intuitively the gist of it all.
The dance did not come off; it had to be postponed indefinitely on account of a grave change in the political relations of the little post.

A day or two before the time set for that function a rumor ran through the town that something of importance was about to happen.
Father Gibault, at the head of a small party, had arrived from Kaskaskia, far away on the Mississippi, with the news that France and the American Colonies had made common cause against the English in the great war of which the people of Vincennes neither knew the cause nor cared a straw about the outcome.
It was Oncle Jazon who came to the Roussillon place to tell M.
Roussillon that he was wanted at the river house.

Alice met him at the door.
"Come in, Oncle Jazon," she cheerily said, "you are getting to be a stranger at our house lately.