“I was born,” she said, “in New Orleans.  My father was a Spaniard and my mother a French Creole.  She was very beautiful and my father met her at a French ball and wished her for his companion for life, but as she was an intelligent girl and a devout Catholic she would not consent to live a life by which she would be denied the Sacrament of her Church; so while she could not contract a civil marriage, which would give her the legal claims of a wife, she could enter into an ecclesiastical marriage by which she would not forfeit her claim to the rights and privileges of the Church as a good Catholic.  I was her only child, loved and petted by my father, and almost worshipped by my mother, and I never knew what it was to have a wish unfilled if it was in her power to gratify it.  When I was about 16 I met Clarence Luzerne.  People then said that I was very beautiful.  You would scarcely think so now, but I suppose he thought so, too.  In a short time we were married, and soon saw that we were utterly unfitted to each other; he was grave and I was gay; he was careful and industrious, I was careless and extravagant; he loved the quiet of his home and books; I loved the excitements of pleasure and the ball room, and yet I think he loved me, but it was as a father might love a wayward child whom he vainly tried to restrain.  I had a cousin who had been absent from New Orleans a number of years, of whose antecedents I knew not scarcely anything.  He was lively, handsome and dashing.  My husband did not like his society, and objected to my associating with him.  I did not care particularly for him, but I chafed against the restraint, and in sheer waywardness I continued the association.  One day he brought me a beautiful diamond necklace which he said he had obtained in a distant land.  I laid it aside intending to show it to my husband; in the meantime, a number of burglaries had been committed in the city of B., and among them was a diamond necklace.  My heart stood still with sudden fear while I read of the account and while I was resolving what to do, my husband entered the house followed by two officers, who demanded the necklace.  My husband interfered and with a large sum of money obtained my freedom from arrest.  My husband was very proud of the honor of his family and blamed me for staining its record.  From that day my husband seemed changed in his feelings towards me.  He grew cold, distant and abstracted, and I felt that my presence was distasteful to him.  I could not enter into his life and I saw that he had no sympathy with mine, and so in a fit of desperation I packed my trunk and took with me some money I had inherited from my father and left, as I said in a note, forever.  I entered a convent and resolved that I would devote myself to the service of the poor and needy, for life had lost its charms for me.  I had scarcely entered the convent before the yellow fever broke out and raged with fearful intensity.  I was reckless of my life and engaged myself as a