this was part of a scheme to accelerate the
ecclesiastical preferment of her uncle. Ah! but he was an ambitious man
and aspired to the throne of S. Peter. His scheme failed, however, owing
to the wicked intrigues of the Jesuits.

Parts of this might have borne, I do not say amplification, for it was
quite long enough, but a word or two of elucidation. I have no doubt
Mery would have been quite ready to explain everything, for she had
nothing to conceal and the subject would have done as well as any other
to display her feminine charm, but I did not interrupt, because I have
observed that when a thorough woman of business undertakes to elucidate a
point of law, she does it so much in the manner of Mrs. Nickleby that she
not infrequently leaves it more obscure than she finds it. Mery did not
expressly say she was a woman of business, she, in fact, disclaimed any
such pretension, but she did it with a delightful mock modesty that
forbade us to take her words literally.

No expense was spared over Mery's education. She was sent to a convent
at Marseilles and the nuns were very kind to her, not because of her
ecclesiastical connection, but because they were holy women with large
and noble hearts. Before her education was completed, however, she was
sent for to return home, and oh, what a home it was! Her mother's health
had broken down because the cardinal beat her, her legal father drank
instead of protecting his wife, the younger children were uncared-for and
the elder children, though they were growing up, had not Mery's business
capacity and powers of management. She put her shoulder to the wheel,
did the marketing, the cooking and the cleaning; she washed and mended
the children's clothes and saw to everything. She hated the life, but
woman was born to suffer and she did her duty.

In time her next sister married a music-hall singer--I should say a
dramatic artist. Mery, who was now entering upon the heyday of her youth
and beauty, was naturally introduced to the friends of her sister's
husband. Every man in the company fell in love with her; all the
bachelors proposed, and without her natural firmness, reinforced by the
teaching of the holy nuns, she could scarcely have escaped matrimony.
There was another thing that helped to save her--she was waiting for her
anima gemella. I may here say that her anima gemella has not yet crossed
her path and that her real age is twenty-seven. She told us this in
confi