soul.

The sob in his throat almost strangled his speech. 'She mourned me to
the last as dead. I was borne away senseless and desperately wounded;
and when I recovered power to seek her it was too late! O Madame! have
pity--let me see all she has left to me.

'Is it possible?' said the nun. 'We would not learn the parentage of
our nurslings since all alike become children of Mother Church.
Then, suddenly bethinking herself, 'But, surely, Monsieur cannot be a
Huguenot.

It was no doubt the first time she had been brought in contact with
a schismatic, and she could not believe that such respectful courtesy
could come from one. He saw he must curb himself, and explain. 'I am
neither Calvinist nor Sacrementaire, Madame. I was bred in England,
where we love our own Church. My aunt is a Benedictine Sister, who keeps
her rule strictly, though her convent is destroyed; and it is to her
that I shall carry my daughter. Ah, Lady, did you but know my heart's
hunger for her!

The Prioress, better read in the lives of the saints than in the sects
of heretics, did not know whether this meant that he was of her own
faith or not; and her woman's heart being much moved by his pleadings,
she said, 'I will heartily give your daughter to you, sir, as indeed I
must, if she be here; but you have never seen her?

'No; only her empty cradle in the burnt house. But I MUST know her. She
is a year old.

'We have two babes of that age; but I fear me you will scarce see much
likeness in either of them to any one you knew,' said the Prioress,
thoughtfully. 'However, there are two girls old enough to remember the
parentage of their companions, though we forbade them to mention it.
Would you see them, sir?

'And the infants, so please you, reverend Mother,' exclaimed Berenger.

She desired him to wait, and after an interval of suspense there was
a pattering of little _sabots_ behind the partition, and through the
grating he beheld six little girls in blue serge frocks and tight white
caps. Of the two infants, one with a puny, wizen, pinched face was in
the arms of the Prioress; the other, a big, stout, coarse child, with
hard brown cheeks and staring black-eyes, was on its own feet, but with
a great basket-work frame round its head to save it from falls. There
were two much more prepossessing children of three or four, and two
intelligent-looking girls of perhaps eight and ten, to the elder of whom
the Prioress turned, saying, 'Agathe, I rel