Her father was there also, cheerfully awaiting her marriage with Gering, whom, since he had lost most traces of Puritanism, he liked.

He had long suspected the girl's interest in Iberville; if he had known that two letters from him--unanswered--had been treasured, read, and re-read, he would have been anxious.

That his daughter should marry a Frenchman--a filibustering seigneur, a Catholic, the enemy of the British colonies, whose fellow-countrymen incited the Indians to harass and to massacre--was not to be borne.
Besides, the Honourable Hogarth Leveret, whose fame in the colony was now often in peril because of his Cavalier propensities, and whose losses had aged him, could not bear that he should sink and carry his daughter with him.

Jessica was the apple of his eye; for her he would have borne all, sorts of trials; but he could not bear to see her called on to bear them.

Like most people out of the heyday of their own youth, he imagined the way a maid's fancy ought to go.
If he had known how much his daughter's promise to marry Gering would cost her, he would not have had it.