Moreover, he was fond of Father Beret and had done a great deal for the little church of St.Xavier and the mission it represented; but he distinctly desired to be let alone while he pursued his own course; and he had promised the dying woman who gave Alice to him that the child should be left as she was, a Protestant, without undue influence to change her from the faith of her parents.

This promise he had kept with stubborn persistence and he meant to keep it as long as he lived.

Perhaps the very fact that his innermost conscience smote him with vague yet telling blows at times for this departure from the strict religion of his fathers, may have intensified his resistance of the influence constantly exerted upon Alice by Father Beret and Madame Roussillon, to bring her gently but surely to the church.

Perverseness is a force to be reckoned with in all original characters.
A few weeks had passed after M.Roussillon's return, when that big-hearted man took it into his head to celebrate his successful trading ventures with a moonlight dance given without reserve to all the inhabitants of Vincennes.

It was certainly a democratic function that he contemplated, and motley to a most picturesque extent.
Rene de Ronville called upon Alice a day or two previous to the occasion and duly engaged her as his partenaire; but she insisted upon having the engagement guarded in her behalf by a condition so obviously fanciful that he accepted it without argument.
"If my wandering knight should arrive during the dance, you promise to stand aside and give place to him," she stipulated.