He was forced to reply to her inquiries after the poor King’s health before she opened the letter, taking it under her veil to read it; so that as he stood, trembling, almost sickening with anxiety, and scarcely able to breathe, he could see nothing but the black folds; and at her low murmured exclamation he started as if at a cannon-shot.

‘De Ribaumont!’ she said; ’can it be—­the child—­of—­of—­out poor dear little pensionnaire at Bellaise?

‘It is—­it is!’ cried Berenger.  ’O Madame, you knew her at Bellaise?

‘Even so,’ replied the Prioress, who was in fact the Soeur Monique so loved and regretted by Eustacie.  ’I loved and prayed for her with all my heart when she was claimed by the world.  Heaven’s will be done; but the poor little thing loved me, and I have often thought that had I been still at Bellaise when she returned she would not have fled.  But of this child I have no knowledge.

‘You took charge of the babes of La Sablerie, Madame,’ said Berenger, almost under his breath.

‘Her infant among those poor orphans!’ exclaimed the Prioress, more and more startled and amazed.

’If it be anywhere in this life, it is in your good keeping, Madame,’ said Berenger, with tears in his eyes.  ’Oh!  I entreat, withhold her no longer.

‘But,’ exclaimed the bewildered nun, ’who would you then be, sir?

‘I—­her husband—­widower of Eustacie—­father of her orphan!’ cried Berenger.  ’She cannot be detained from me, either by right or law.

‘Her husband,’ still hesitated Monique.  ’But he is dead.  The poor little one—­Heaven have mercy on her soul—­wrote me a piteous entreaty, and gave large alms for prayers and masses for his soul.

The sob in his throat almost strangled his speech.  ’She mourned me to the last as dead.  I was borne away senseless and desperately wounded; and when I recovered power to seek her it was too late!  O Madame! have pity—­let me see all she has left to me.

‘Is it possible?’ said the nun.  ’We would not learn the parentage of our nurslings since all alike become children of Mother Church.  Then, suddenly bethinking herself, ’But, surely, Monsieur cannot be a Huguenot.

It was no doubt the first time she had been brought in contact with a schismatic, and she could not believe that such respectful courtesy could come from one.  He saw he must curb himself, and explain.  ’I am neither Calvinist nor Sacrementaire, Madame.  I was bred in England, where we love our own Church.  My aunt is a Benedictine Sister, who keeps her rule strictly, though her convent is destroyed; and it is to her that I shall carry my daughter.  Ah, Lady, did you but know my heart’s hunger for her!

The Prioress, better read in the lives of the saints than in the sects of heretics, did not know whether this meant that he was of her own faith or not; and her woman’s heart being much moved by his pleadings, she said, ’I will heartily give your daughter to you, sir, as indeed I must, if she be here; but you have never seen her?