and the placid
face.

"I am not a good Catholic, either. I do not go to confession. I do not
tell lies nor steal, and though I get in tempers, it is because people
try me and insist that I should do what I know it would be wrong for me
to do. I did not want any husband, and I said so."

"But all girls hope to marry some time. I should like to have as good a
husband as my mother has, and be as happy with him."

"He is delightful," admitted Rose. "But your mother loved him."

"He was chosen for her, and there was no good reason why she should not
accept him. Yes, they have been very happy. But in France girls do not
have a voice, and when the husband is chosen, they set themselves about
making every act and thought of theirs agreeable."

"But if he was--unworthy?"

"Few parents would choose an unworthy lover, I think. They have the good
of their children at heart."

Eustache Boulle had not been unworthy. He would have married her,
nameless. Her heart turned suddenly tender toward him. She was learning
that in the greater world there was a certain pride of birth, an honor
in being well-born. She was better satisfied that she had not accepted
Eustache. What if the Sieur had been opposed to it and Madame de
Champlain frowned upon her?

And then the Sieur returned, but he came alone. The house in the Rue St.
Germain l'Auxerrois, with Madame Boulle, was more attractive than the
roughness of a half-civilized country. Even then Helene plead for
permission to become a lay sister in a convent, which would have meant a
separation, but he would not agree to this. Ten years after his death
she entered the Ursuline Convent, and some years later founded one in
the town of Meaux, endowing it with most of her fortune. And though the
next summer Eustache renewed his suit, he met with a firm refusal, and
found the influence of his brother-in-law was against him.

Rose had been brave enough to lay the matter before him.

"Little one," he said, in the most fatherly tone--"if thou dost not love
a man enough to give him thy whole soul, except what belongs to God, to
desire to spend thy life with him, to honor and serve him with the best
thou hast, then do not marry him. It is a bitter thing for a man to go
hungry for love, when a woman has promised to hold the cup of joy to his
lips."

Eustache then returned to France, and after a period of study and
preparation, took holy orders, as a Friar.

CHAPTER XIV

A WAY OVER THO