we may
seem, we are politic in this, Grace--that our adventure must _force_
your aunt into sending us her sanction." She looked at me, but her
face remained grave. "Caudel," said I, "who is as much your guardian
as I am, put the same question to me. But there is no earthly good in
_supposing_. It is monstrous to suppose that your aunt will object.
She hates me, I know, but her aversion--the aversion of that old woman
of the world with her family pride and notions of propriety--is not
going to suffer her to forbid our marriage after this. Yet, grant that
her ladyship--my blessings upon her false front!--should go on saying
no; are we not prepared?"

"But if it has to come to my living with your sister, Herbert--"

"It will come to nothing of the sort," I whipped out.

"Would it not have been better for me," she continued, "to have
remained under Aunt Amelia's care until I came of age?"

"Aunt Amelia," said I, "in that sense means your Boulogne
school-mistress, and in much less than three years you would have been
pestered into changing your faith."

"You think I have no strength of mind. You may be right," she added,
looking at me and then around her and sighing.

"But remember, my darling, what you have written to me. What was the
name now of mam'selle's confessor?"

"Pere Jerome."

"Well, on your own showing, wasn't this Father Jerome ceaseless in his
importunities?"

"Yes. Mam'selle was repeatedly leaving me alone with him under one
excuse or another. He sent me books--I was taken to mass--only
yesterday morning mam'selle lost her temper with me, and quite made me
understand that her orders from Aunt Amelia were to convert me, _coute
que coute_--"

"Then," cried I, interrupting her once more, hot with the irritation
that had again and again visited me when I read her letters where she
complained of the behaviour of mam'selle and this Father Jerome; "is
there any mortal of our faith, I care not what may be his or her
theories of human propriety, who could pronounce against us for acting
as we have? My contention is, your aunt is not a proper guardian for
you. If it were your father or your mother--both Protestants, whose
spirits, looking down upon you, we are bound to believe, would wish you
to live and die Protestant to the heart as they were! But Lady Amelia
Roscoe!--the most wretched mixture that can be imagined, of bigotry and
worldliness, her head stuffed full of priests and dress, of bead