Clotilde joined them at last.  Whatever might have been her inward emotion, she appeared calm, having nothing theatrical in her ways.  She replied simply, in a low and gentle voice, to her mother’s feverish questions; she remained convinced that this misfortune would not have happened, if she could have herself informed Julia, with some precautions, of the event which chance had abruptly revealed to her.  Addressing then a sad smile to Monsieur de Lucan: 

“These family difficulties, sir,” she said to him, “could not have formed a part of your anticipations, and I should deem it quite natural were they to lead to some modification of your plans.”: 

An expressive anxiety became depicted upon Lucan’s features.  “If you ask me to restore to you your freedom,” he said, “I cannot but comply; if it is your delicacy alone that has spoken, I beg to assure you that you are still dearer to me since I have seen you suffer on my account, and suffer with so much dignity.”

She held out her hand, which he seized, bowing low at the same time.

“I shall love your daughter so much,” he said, “that she will forgive me.”

“Yes, I hope so,” said Clotilde; “nevertheless, she wishes to enter a convent for a few months, and I have consented.”

Her voice trembled and her eyes became moist.

“Excuse me, sir,” she added; “I have no right as yet to make you participate to such an extent in my sorrows.  May I beg of you to leave me alone with my mother?”

Lucan murmured a few words of respect, and withdrew.  It was quite true, as he had said, that Clotilde was dearer to him than ever.  Nothing had inspired him with such a lofty idea of the moral worth of that woman as her attitude during that trying evening.  Stricken in the midst of her flight of happiness, she had fallen without a cry, without a groan, striving to hide her wound; she had manifested in his presence that exquisite modesty in suffering so rare among her sex.  He was the more grateful to her for it, that he was deeply averse to those pathetic and turbulent demonstrations which most women never fail to eagerly exhibit on every occasion, when they are indeed kind enough not to bring them about.

CHAPTER III.

JULIA’S CHAMPION.

Monsieur de Lucan had been Clotilde’s husband for several months when the rumor spread among society that Mademoiselle de Trecoeur, formerly known as such an incarnate little devil, was about taking the vail in the convent of the Faubourg Saint Germain, to which she had withdrawn before her mother’s marriage.  That rumor was well founded.  Julia had endured at first with some difficulty the discipline and the observances to which the simple boarders of the establishment were themselves bound to submit; then she had been gradually taken with a pious fervor, the excesses of which they had been compelled to moderate.  She had begged her mother not to put an obstacle to the irresistible inclination which she felt for a religious life, and Clotilde had with difficulty obtained permission that she should adjourn her resolution until the accomplishment of her sixteenth year.