“He stole her,” responded the lime-burner, “from a full-blooded French girl below Three Rivers, that some Quebec Jesuit mixed up with him in marriage. My cousin lives in the same côte, and little liking hath she for this half-breed who scorns her mother’s people and calls herself a princess.”
“Good hater art thou of Quebec Jesuits,” said Jouaneaux, spreading his approving smile beyond dots of white teeth around large margins of pink gums. “But Quebec Jesuits have done worse work than mixing the blood of this princess. What a little Sister of St. Joseph she would make!” he exclaimed, stretching his neck after the girl and disclosing the healthy depths of his mouth.
“You never look at a woman but to take her measure for the Sisterhood of St. Joseph,” laughed the lime-burner.
“And to what better life could she be measured?” demanded the nuns’ retainer, instantly aggressive, “or what better Sisterhood?”
“There be no better women,” yielded the lime-burner.
All night Sister Brésoles and Sister Macé in turns kneeled beside the prostrate woman in the chapel. She was not disturbed by offers of food or consolation, for they respected her posture and her vigil. The young novices, of whom there were a few, had duties set for them elsewhere. All night a taper burned upon the altar and a nun knelt by it, her shadow wavering long and brown; and the woman’s body, with its arms stretched out on the stones, stirred only at intervals when the hands grasped and wrung each other in renewed prayer.
Before matins Sister Brésoles left her support of this afflicted spirit to devote herself to the revival of the body, by concocting a broth for which she is yet celebrated in Church annals on account of the Divine assistance she received in its preparation. The very odor should rouse Claire from her long fast and cause her to eat and rise, bearing her burdens.
During Sister Brésoles’s absence another figure came in and bowed before the altar.
Conscious of physical disturbance, Claire turned her vacant look towards it, as she had done each time the nuns changed vigils.
This was no serene Sister of St. Joseph, but a dark young girl also flattening herself on the pavement, and writhing about in rages of pain.