which I believe the young baroness you speak of
has not been without her share, and this may be, for aught I know, some
fresh and cleverly devised phase of it. I must be excused for
believing that those who had the matter in hand would not make so very
silly a mistake, and I have only to communicate to mademoiselle the
object with which she has been brought hither."

It may well be imagined that Clotilde was not a little disconcerted
both by the tone and tenor of this reply. Had she been able to frame
any very definite wish during her journey, it would perhaps have been
that she might meet with some such person as the Lady Superior of a
religious house and claim her protection. Here she was in just such a
position, yet with the clouds apparently gathering still more blackly
over her. She would have been less surprised, however, had she known a
little more about the antecedents of Madame de Varny, the Superior of
the Ursuline Convent, the place to which she had been brought. Noble
by birth, and pre-eminently lovely and accomplished, Madame de Varny
had once been the proudest beauty of the court of King Louis, but
having been attacked by that terrible scourge the small-pox, she had
recovered only to find herself as hideous as she had once been
beautiful. To be an object of loathing where she had formerly been
courted and admired was more than her frivolous and worldly mind could
bear, and she had retired to the seclusion of a nominally religious
life, in which her rank and influence secured her the position she now
enjoyed; but, like many of her class, she still clung to the world, and
her intriguing disposition led her often enough to lend her aid,
whenever those with whom she had been used to associate required it, to
carry out some plot or scheme arising out of the debased and
unscrupulous court life of that period. She was an old acquaintance of
Madame de Valricour, and in her the baroness had found an able and
willing confederate in the business now on hand.

"Madame," said Clotilde, after a short silence, "you will believe me or
not, as you think best, and will make to me what communication you
choose; it rests with me to decide how I shall act upon it."

"Not altogether," replied the lady, with a smile that had nothing very
pleasant in it. "Mademoiselle will not have much choice in the matter.
I shall not waste time," she continued, "by any allusion to the family
circumstances to which you owe your visit