"Oh, Eulalie——"
"Repining is futile—I have taken the irrevocable vows for life."
"For life! you know not the suspense—I may well call it torture—I endured, my dear friend—after discovering your abduction from Barbadoes; visions of cruelty and death were ever before me."
"I suffered much cruelty, but not death. Rouvigny relented—even he could relent. He brought me here, and I embraced a new life, as an escape from that to which he had condemned me."
"But was not this irregular—without a divorce? and consent——"
"Of the Pope you would say?"
"Yes."
"It is irregular; but in the total confusion of all our ecclesiastical affairs, here and in Italy, the Bishop of Martinique, though deposed by the Republicans, permitted it, as the best mode of separating us for ever, and perhaps of protecting me."
"Are you happy?" I asked, almost reproachfully.
"Happy!" she reiterated, in a tone of voice that was exquisitely touching; "what said Louise de la Valliere, in. answer to the same question, when she became a nun: 'I am not happy; but I am content.'"