ot tell me who it was, thinking, I
fancy, that neither you nor I would have so much as known his name. But
never care about the wretch. Here is Madame's letter."

It was as kind a letter as could be written, full of thanks for the
favour I had shown her in introducing my friends to her, and of hopes
that we should one day meet again, when all the past should be
forgotten, and I should resume my own place and station in the society
of my own land. She begged my acceptance of the pretty dresses she
sent, which she said she had selected, not for their value, but because
they were pretty; and, in her postscript, she added, what of course
outweighed all the rest of her letter, both in interest and importance,
that she had recently been informed through a strange channel, and, as
it were, by accident, that my mother's health was failing, seriously,
and that, although not attacked by any regular disorder, nor in any
immediate danger, it was not thought probable that she could live much
longer. "In that case, Valerie," she continued, "for, although no one
could be so unnatural as to _wish_ for a mother's death, how cruel and
unmotherly she might be soever, it cannot be expected that you should
regard her decease with more than decent observation, and a proper
seriousness, and I shall look to see you dwelling again among us, and
spending the little fortune which I understand you have so bravely
earned, in the midst of your friends, and in your own country."

"That I shall never do," I said, speaking aloud, though in answer partly
to her letter, partly to my own words; "that I shall never do. Visit
France I may, once and again; but in England I shall dwell. France
banished and repudiated me like a step-mother--England received me,
kinder than my own, like a mother. In England I shall dwell."

"Wait till you see the lord of your destinies; and learn where he shall
dwell. You will have to say, like the rest of us, `Your country shall
be my country, and your God my God,'"--observed Adele interrupting my
musings.

"The first perhaps--the last never! never! Catholic I was born,
Catholic I will die. I do _not_ say that I will never marry any but a
Catholic, but I _do_ say that I will never marry but one who will
approve my adoring my own God, according to my own conscience."

"Is the Count de Chavannes a Catholic?"

"Indeed, I know not. But he is a Breton, and the Bretons are a loyal
race, both to their king and their