ing, "In God's name
be welcome, Sir Geoffroy! Is it you?" After which she went up to the
abbess and whispered a word or two in her ear which seemed to dispel
all anxiety. The pious lady depended too fully on the lessons of wisdom
and virtue, which her charge had imbibed with conventual milk, to hold
it possible that she should give her heart to a nameless illegitimate
cousin, especially at a time when, in all probability, a distinguished
alliance awaited her. Accordingly she clasped Garcinde--who burst into
tears--in her motherly embrace, herself helped her to mount the old
convent grey, while Aigleta was lifted by Geoffroy on to a spirited
pony, and with much sobbing and waving of hands and handkerchiefs, the
small cavalcade was at last sent off from the old arched gate of Mont
Salvair, through which the band of the Brides of Heaven slowly and
mournfully returned.

But the young travelling-companions, too, proceeded on their way more
silently and thoughtfully than might be expected, when a knightly
youth, on the fairest of summer days, guides two fair maidens mounted
on fresh horses upon their first expedition into a smiling world. After
a hasty question as to how her father was, Garcinde had not again
addressed Geoffroy, influenced, perhaps, by the curt although
reverential manner in which he had seemed to avoid entering into
further details. But Aigleta, who for her part had not allowed the
departure from Mont Salvair to weigh the least upon her spirits, took
up a livelier tone, and after a sigh of gratitude for being at last
delivered from the pious monotony of cloistered life, began to give
Geoffroy an amusing account of its course from day to day. She was an
excellent mimic, and counterfeited the voices of the different sisters,
their mild whispers, and downcast eyes, their unrestrained laughing and
screaming as soon as they were unobserved, their petty spiteful
quarrels, their cloying affectionateness to each other, ready at a
moment's notice to turn into deadly enmity. In the midst of all this
she introduced the solemn bass voice of the abbess, exhorting to peace,
and painting the dangers of the world; and finally she concluded with a
wild medley of pious and godless speeches, in which the nuns were
supposed to express their feelings on the departure of the young
Countess, their envy, their fear that Satan with all his crew might be
waiting for them outside the gates; lastly the prayer of the abbess for
their d