Himself in early youth had felt the austerity of a Cavalier father turned a Puritan on a sudden, and he wished no such experience for his daughter.

For all her abundancy of life and feeling, he knew how plastic and impressionable she was, and he dreaded to see that exaltation of her fresh spirit touched with gloom.
She was his only child, she had been little out of his sight, her education had gone on under his own care, and, in so far as was possible in a new land, he had surrounded her with gracious influences.

He looked forward to any definite separation (as marriage) with apprehension.
Perhaps one of the reasons why he chose Colonel Nicholls's house for her home, was a fear lest George Gering should so impress her that she might somehow change ere his return.

And in those times brides of sixteen were common as now they are rare.
She sat on the governor's left.

All the brightness, the soft piquancy, which Iberville knew, had returned; and he wondered--fortunate to know that wonder so young--at her varying moods.