“Poor soul!” he said to himself over and over again. “Poor soul! she had the look and the walk of a ghost,—and of a tormented ghost, at that.”
And at that moment De Bourmont with a sore heart, was on his way toward Leith, to embark for France. For there had been no light in Lady Betty’s window, and there was no letter of his in her hand.
IV
IT was more than a year after, that, one sunny August day, the Abbé de Ronceray alighted from the diligence as it stopped before the great stone gate of a white-walled convent in Provence. The air was soft, as Provence air is, and the sky was of a deep, deep blue, against which the masses of purplish woods showed darkly. The road was white and clean, and over everything grew roses of a rich red and a richer white and the palest pink,—all rioting in the beauty of the summer time.
The abbé had aged a little in that year, but his eyes were as kind as ever, and his carriage as soldierlike. He walked slowly down the avenue lined with tall Lombardy poplars, standing in ranks, like soldiers, toward the low, rambling convent building. There was a sweet stillness over everything,—that peculiar quiet and absence of alarms which characterizes places from which the tumultuous world is excluded. The abbé’s thoughts were decidedly optimistic. The country had quieted down under the rule of the Corsican, and the abbé had no doubt, like all the rest of the Bourbon followers, that, after Napoleon’s day, France would again call for her rightful king, and he pleased himself mightily with the notion. Meanwhile, it was pleasanter living in France, even under the Corsican’s rule, than anywhere on earth,—for exile is hard upon your true Frenchman. He had served his term of duty with the Comte d’Artois, and had been heartily glad when he was excused from further attendance, for a time at least, and some other patient abbé had taken his place.
As he neared the open door in the middle of the sunny, whitewashed convent walls, he began to be a little eager respecting the person he was to see.
“Who would have thought Lady Betty Stair would ever be a religious! She seemed born to be of a court—her little feet seemed made for white satin slippers only, and dancing was more natural to her than walking. Ah, those Highland dances she used to do so like a sprite—and De Bourmont—”
The abbé shook his head and sighed. That chance word he let fall that night at Holyrood lay heavy on his conscience. He had made a long journey to confess it, and when told he had committed no sin, only an unfortunate inadvertence, his conscience was not altogether eased. For many years he had harbored no suspicion of the identity of the man who came to him that October evening in 1789, and in darkness and in whispers confessed having run Angus Macdonald through the body, when called to account for some slight to the Scotchman’s young sister. Of late, though, he was haunted by the thought that it was Bastien. Lady Betty Stair evidently knew who it was, but her cry, “My heart is broken!” seemed grotesquely out of place concerning Bastien, whom she notoriously hated. Being well skilled in the human heart, the abbé had seen how things were in the old days between De Bourmont and Lady Betty Stair; but, like everybody else, he was astounded when Lady Betty quietly left Holyrood, a few days after De Bourmont’s departure, and the next heard of her, she had entered the novitiate of the Sisters of Mercy. Scarcely less of a change had come over De Bourmont,—he, once the most careless, debonair young spirit in the world,—now, a silent, serious, determined soldier, without a hope or an aspiration beyond his duty. It was all very puzzling, and the abbé had not cleared it up when he pulled the convent bell and heard it clang through the building in the quiet of the August afternoon. The abbé, bowing low to the portress, asked to see the superior, and was shown into the convent parlor to await her. It was so calm, so peaceful—and there were so many roses! They even climbed through the window, and their laughing faces peered over the stone sill. Presently the superior entered, and she and the abbé, having known each other long before the troubles, were delighted to meet once more; and to show her appreciation of the honor of the visit she took him into the convent garden, where a lay sister served seed cake and mulberry wine to him. The abbé crumbled his cake and made a heroic effort to drink the wine; but it was too much for his politeness and his charity combined. However, the superior, intent on hearing of all their mutual friends, did not remark this. After a while the abbé said:—
“I desire, after paying my respects to you, dear mother, to see Sister Claire, who is also an old friend of mine, despite the difference in our ages. She was in attendance upon their Royal Highnesses at Holyrood, and she was then Lady Betty Stair.”
“Ah, Sister Claire! Well, Monsieur l’Abbé, I can only say that the more of those fine ladies who come to us, the better. They have already served so hard an apprenticeship to the rule of the world, that ours seems simple enough to them. They find the hardest life of a religious easy by comparison with what society exacted of them. They always turn out our bravest sisters; they fear nothing.”