er
to bear than loneliness. The story was hard to tell, but she told it,
without pause, without reserve. Father Antoine's face grew stern as she
proceeded. When she ceased speaking, he said:

"My daughter, you have sinned; sinned grievously: you must return
to your husband. You have violated a holy sacrament of the Church. I
command you to return to your husband."

Hetty stared at him in undisguised wonder. At last she said:

"Why do you speak to me like that, sir? I can obey no man: only my own
conscience is my law. I will never return to my husband."

"The Church is the conscience of all her erring children," replied
Father Antoine, "and disobedience is at the peril of one's soul. I lay
it upon you, as the command of the Church, that you return, my daughter.
You have sinned most grievously."

"Oh," said Hetty, with apparent irrelevance. "I understand now. You took
me for a Catholic."

It was Father Antoine's turn to stare.

"Why then, if you are not, came you to me?" he said sternly. "I am here
only as priest."

Hetty clasped her hands, and said pleadingly:

"Oh no! not only as priest: you are a good man. My father always said
so. We were not Catholics; and I could not be of any other religion than
my father's, now he is dead," (here Hetty unconsciously touched a
chord in Antoine Ladeau's breast, which gave quick response): "but I
recollected how he trusted you, and I said, if I can hide myself in that
little village, Father Antoine will be good to me for my father's sake.
But you must not tell me to go back to my home: no one can judge about
that but me. The thing I have done is best: I shall not go back. And, if
you will not keep my secret and be my friend, I will go away at once and
hide myself in some other place still farther away, and will ask no one
again to be my friend, ever till I die!"

Father Antoine was perplexed. All the blood of ancient knighthood which
was in his veins was stirred with chivalrous desire to help Hetty:
but, on the other hand, both as man and as priest, he felt that she
had committed a great wrong, and that he could not even appear to
countenance it. He studied Hetty's face: in spite of its evident marks
of pain, it was as indomitable as rock.

"You have the old Huguenot soul, my daughter," he said. "Antoine Ladeau
knows better than to try to cause you to swerve from the path you have
chosen. But the good God can give you light: it may be that he has
directed you here to fi