Agricola’s consent was given with malicious promptness, and as Bras-Coupe’s fetters fell off it was decreed that, should he fill his office efficiently, there should be a wedding on the rear veranda of the Grandissime mansion simultaneously with the one already appointed to take place in the grand hall of the same house six months from that present day.  In the meanwhile Palmyre should remain with Mademoiselle, who had promptly but quietly made up her mind that Palmyre should not be wed unless she wished to be.  Bras-Coupe made no objection, was royally worthless for a time, but learned fast, mastered the “gumbo” dialect in a few weeks, and in six months was the most valuable man ever bought for gourde dollars.  Nevertheless, there were but three persons within as many square miles who were not most vividly afraid of him.

The first was Palmyre.  His bearing in her presence was ever one of solemn, exalted respect, which, whether from pure magnanimity in himself, or by reason of her magnetic eye, was something worth being there to see.  “It was royal!” said the overseer.

The second was not that official.  When Bras-Coupe said—­as, at stated intervals, he did say—­“Mo courri c’ez Agricole Fusilier pou’ ’oir ’namourouse (I go to Agricola Fusilier to see my betrothed,)” the overseer would sooner have intercepted a score of painted Chickasaws than that one lover.  He would look after him and shake a prophetic head.  “Trouble coming; better not deceive that fellow;” yet that was the very thing Palmyre dared do.  Her admiration for Bras-Coupe was almost boundless.  She rejoiced in his stature; she revelled in the contemplation of his untamable spirit; he seemed to her the gigantic embodiment of her own dark, fierce will, the expanded realization of her lifetime longing for terrible strength.  But the single deficiency in all this impassioned regard was—­what so many fairer loves have found impossible to explain to so many gentler lovers—­an entire absence of preference; her heart she could not give him—­she did not have it.  Yet after her first prayer to the Spaniard and his overseer for deliverance, to the secret surprise and chagrin of her young mistress, she simulated content.  It was artifice; she knew Agricola’s power, and to seem to consent was her one chance with him.  He might thus be beguiled into withdrawing his own consent.  That failing, she had Mademoiselle’s promise to come to the rescue, which she could use at the last moment; and that failing, there was a dirk in her bosom, for which a certain hard breast was not too hard.  Another element of safety, of which she knew nothing, was a letter from the Cannes Brulee.  The word had reached there that love had conquered—­that, despite all hard words, and rancor, and positive injury, the Grandissime hand—­the fairest of Grandissime hands—­was about to be laid into that of one who without much stretch might be called a De Grapion; that there was, moreover, positive effort being made to induce a restitution