ens?' and the large eyes were
lifted up to him in such frank seeking of sympathy that he could see
into the depths of their clear darkness.

'It is her doing then. Though, Eustacie, when I knew the truth, not
flood nor fire should keep me long from you, my heart, my love, my
wife.'

'What! wife in spite of those villainous letter?' she said, trying to
pout.

'Wife for ever, inseparably! Only you must be able to swear that you
knew nothing of the one that brought me here.'

'Poor me! No, indeed! There was Celine carried off at fourteen, Madame
de Blanchet a bride at fifteen; all marrying hither and thither; and
I--' she pulled a face irresistibly droll--'I growing old enough to
dress St. Catherine's hair, and wondering where was M. le Baron.'

'They thought me too young,' said Berenger, 'to take on me the cares of
life.'

'So they were left to me?'

'Cares! What cares have you but finding the Queen's fan?'

'Little you know!' she said, half contemptuous, half mortified.

'Nay, pardon me, _ma mie_. Who has troubled you?'

'Ah! you would call it nothing to be beset by Narcisse; to be told one's
husband is faithless, till one half believes it; to be looked at by ugly
eyes; to be liable to be teased any day by Monsieur, or worse, by that
mocking ape, M. d'Alecon, and to have nobody who can or will hinder it.'

She was sobbing by this time, and he exclaimed, 'Ah, would that I could
revenge all! Never, never shall it be again! What blessed grace has
guarded you through all?'

'Did I not belong to you?' she said exultingly. 'And had not Sister
Monique, yes, and M. le Baron, striven hard to make me good? Ah, how
kind he was!'

'My father? Yes, Eustacie, he loved you to the last. He bade me, on his
deathbed, give you his own Book of Psalms, and tell you he had always
loved and prayed for you.'

'Ah! his Psalms! I shall love them! Even at Bellaise, when first we came
there, we used to sing them, but the Mother Abbess went out visiting,
and when she came back she said they were heretical. And Soeur Monique
would not let me say the texts he taught me, but I WOULD not forget
them. I say them often in my heart.'

'Then,' he cried joyfully, 'you will willingly embrace my religion?'

'Be a Huguenot?' she said distastefully.

'I am not precisely a Huguenot; I do not love them,' he answered
hastily; 'but all shall be made clear to you at my home in England.'

'England!' she said. 'Must we live in England? Away from