iasm. "Why need you scold her? She is certainly pretty, and dainty
enough for a king. Stranger things than that have happened, and who
knows what may come?"

Sadly Hubertine looked at him with her calm eyes.

"Do not encourage her to do wrong, my dear. You know, better than
anyone, what it costs to follow too much the impulses of one's heart."

He turned deadly pale, and great tears came to the edge of his eyelids.
She immediately repented of having reproved him, and rose to offer him
her hands. But gently disengaging himself, he said, stammeringly:

"No, no, my dear; I was wrong. Angelique, do you understand me? You must
always listen to your mother. She alone is wise, and we are both of us
very foolish. I am wrong; yes, I acknowledge it."

Too disturbed to sit down, leaving the cope upon which he had been
working, he occupied himself in pasting a banner that was finished,
although still in its frame. After having taken the pot of Flemish glue
from the chest of drawers, he moistened with a brush the underside of
the material, to make the embroidery firmer. His lips still trembled,
and he remained quiet.

But if Angelique, in her obedience, was also still, she allowed her
thoughts to follow their course, and her fancies mounted higher and
still higher. She showed it in every feature--in her mouth, that ecstasy
had half opened, as well as in her eyes, where the infinite depth of her
visions seemed reflected. Now, this dream of a poor girl, she wove it
into the golden embroidery. It was for this unknown hero that, little
by little, there seemed to grow on the white satin the beautiful great
lilies, and the roses, and the monogram of the Blessed Virgin. The stems
of the lilies had all the gracious pointings of a jet of light, whilst
the long slender leaves, made of spangles, each one being sewed on with
gold twist, fell in a shower of stars. In the centre, the initials of
Mary were like the dazzling of a relief in massive gold, a marvellous
blending of lacework and of embossing, or goffering, which burnt like
the glory of a tabernacle in the mystic fire of its rays. And the roses
of delicately-coloured silks seemed real, and the whole chasuble was
resplendent in its whiteness of satin, which appeared covered almost
miraculously with its golden blossoms.

After a long silence, Angelique, whose cheeks were flushed by the blood
which mounted into them from her excitement, raised her head, and,
looking at Hubertine, sai