uent
guest, whose accomplishments, strong character, and adventurous life
were calculated to influence a young girl's mind, was an instrument in
the hands of the husband to bring the wife to adopt his theories. Never
did she let her mother know the abyss into which her fate had cast her.

"We may well distrust all human prudence when we think of the infinite
precautions taken by Madame de la Chanterie in marrying her only
daughter. The blow, when it came to a life so devoted, so pure, so truly
religious as that of a woman already tested by many trials, gave Madame
de la Chanterie a distrust of herself which served to isolate her from
her daughter; and all the more because her daughter, in compensation
for her misfortunes, exacted complete liberty, ruled her mother, and was
even, at times, unkind to her.

"Wounded thus in all her affections, mistaken in her devotion and
love for her husband, to whom she had sacrificed without a word
her happiness, her fortune, and her life; mistaken in the education
exclusively religious which she had given to her daughter; mistaken in
the confidence she had placed in others in the affair of her daughter's
marriage; and obtaining no justice from the heart in which she had sown
none but noble sentiments, she united herself still more closely to God
as the hand of trouble lay heavy upon her. She was indeed almost a nun;
going daily to church, performing cloistral penances, and practising
economy that she might have means to help the poor.

"Could there be, up to this point, a saintlier life or one more tried
than that of this noble woman, so gentle under misfortune, so brave
in danger, and always Christian?" said Monsieur Alain, appealing to
Godefroid. "You know Madame now,--you know if she is wanting in sense,
judgment, reflection; in fact, she has those qualities to the highest
degree. Well! the misfortunes I have now told you, which might be said
to make her life surpass all others in adversity, are as nothing to
those that were still in store for this poor woman. But now let us
concern ourselves exclusively with Madame de la Chanterie's daughter,"
said the old man, resuming his narrative.

"At eighteen years of age, the period of her marriage, Mademoiselle de
la Chanterie was a young girl of delicate complexion, brown in tone with
a brilliant color, graceful in shape, and very pretty. Above a forehead
of great beauty was a mass of dark hair which harmonized with the brown
eyes and