“My adored friend, come to my arms, and never suppose that I can be angry with you.  I am delighted to see you; you are always my dear wife:  but I entreat you to clear up a cruel doubt, for you could never have betrayed my secret.”

“I!  I would never have been guilty of such a thing, even if death had stared me in the face.”

“Then, how did you come here?  How did your friend contrive to discover everything?  No one but you could tell her that I am your husband.  Laura perhaps....’

“No, Laura is faithful, dearest, and I cannot guess how it was.”

“But how could you be persuaded to assume that disguise, and to come here?  You can leave the convent, and you have never apprised me of that important circumstance.”

“Can you suppose that I would not have told you all about it, if I had ever left the convent, even once?  I came out of it two hours ago, for the first time, and I was induced to take that step in the simplest, the most natural manner.”

“Tell me all about it, my love.  I feel extremely curious.”

“I am glad of it, and I would conceal nothing from you.  You know how dearly M——­ M——­ and I love each other.  No intimacy could be more tender than ours; you can judge of it by what I told you in my letters.  Well, two days ago, my dear friend begged the abbess and my aunt to allow me to sleep in her room in the place of the lay-sister, who, having a very bad cold, had carried her cough to the infirmary.  The permission was granted, and you cannot imagine our pleasure in seeing ourselves at liberty, for the first time, to sleep in the same bed.  To-day, shortly after you had left the parlour, where you so much amused us, without our discovering that the delightful Pierrot was our friend, my dear M——­ M——­ retired to her room and I followed her.  The moment we were alone she told me that she wanted me to render her a service from which depended our happiness.  I need not tell you how readily I answered that she had only to name it.  Then she opened a drawer, and much to my surprise she dressed me in this costume.  She was laughing; and I did the same without suspecting the end of the joke.  When she saw me entirely metamorphosed into a nun, she told me that she was going to trust me with a great secret, but that she entertained no fear of my discretion.  ‘Let me tell you, clearest friend,’ she said to me, ’that I was on the point of going out of the convent, to return only tomorrow morning.  I have, however, just decided that you shall go instead.  You have nothing to fear and you do not require any instructions, because I know that you will meet with no difficulty.  In an hour, a lay-sister will come here, I will speak a few words apart to her, and she will tell you to follow her.  You will go out with her through the small gate and across the garden as far as the room leading out to the low shore.  There you will get into the gondola, and say to the gondolier these words:  ‘To the