‘So they were left to me?’
‘Cares! What cares have you but finding the Queen’s fan?’
‘Little you know!’ she said, half contemptuous, half mortified.
‘Nay, pardon me, ma mie. Who has troubled you?’
‘Ah! you would call it nothing to be beset by Narcisse; to be told one’s husband is faithless, till one half believes it; to be looked at by ugly eyes; to be liable to be teased any day by Monsieur, or worse, by that mocking ape, M. d’Alecon, and to have nobody who can or will hinder it.’
She was sobbing by this time, and he exclaimed, ‘Ah, would that I could revenge all! Never, never shall it be again! What blessed grace has guarded you through all?’
‘Did I not belong to you?’ she said exultingly. ‘And had not Sister Monique, yes, and M. le Baron, striven hard to make me good? Ah, how kind he was!’
‘My father? Yes, Eustacie, he loved you to the last. He bade me, on his deathbed, give you his own Book of Psalms, and tell you he had always loved and prayed for you.’
‘Ah! his Psalms! I shall love them! Even at Bellaise, when first we came there, we used to sing them, but the Mother Abbess went out visiting, and when she came back she said they were heretical. And Soeur Monique would not let me say the texts he taught me, but I WOULD not forget them. I say them often in my heart.’
‘Then,’ he cried joyfully, ‘you will willingly embrace my religion?’