Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/176

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138
THE TOURIST'S MARITIME PROVINCES

married the one no longer wanted when bidden to do so. It was agreed that he should receive £150 a year for life and the appointment as barrack-master at far-way, very far-away, Annapolis. The bartered sweetheart was refused permission to see her children after the separation, but all her furniture, and her fine clothes, silver and jewels were embarked upon the vessel which carried herself and her new companion to distant Nova Scotia.

Very old ladies of Annapolis remember the shrew that Gregoria Remonia Antonia Reiez Norman grew to be. She despised Joseph, her husband, considering him a poor substitute for a Duke and far beneath her who had once charmed a warrior so mighty. She liked to talk of "my dear Duka" before the garrison ladies and to lend his gifts of finery to young girls going to balls. The barrack-master she addressed as "You Norman-a—you beast-a!" Her only solace, besides the souvenirs of her youth, were two white poodles which she fed on rabbits bought from town boys, and always took with her when she drove.

In 1854 when the garrison was permanently withdrawn, Norman retired to enjoy the ducal pension. He and his shrivelled, scornful, quarrelsome wife lived in a house near the corner occupied now by the Union Bank. On the same spot dwelt Fenwick Williams in his boyhood. When Gregoria died in 1863, at the age of seventy-two, Norman sent to England for a niece, who came out with her