Faïel had left sweet, solemn memories with the girl: the green gloom of the fern-brakes and the wooded lanes, the soft grey summers, and the evenings with their mysterious silvery shadows; the silent corridors, the tolling bells, the altars with their white lilies, the pathetic monotonous voices of the nuns—all were blent together in her recollection into a picture full of holiness and calm. Now that she knew what the gipsy woman had meant, she wished to be there for a little while to muse upon her vast happiness, her wondrous future, and consecrate them both.
She asked for, and obtained, permission to go to her old convent in retreat for the two weeks before her marriage. Madame de Vannes was inclined to refuse what she regarded as excessive and eccentric, but Othmar obtained her consent.
It pleased him that she should pass her time before her marriage with the holy women who had trained her childhood; it was not so that Nadine Napraxine had spent the weeks preceding her soulless union.
‘You wish not to see her for two whole weeks?’ said the Duchesse, suspiciously.
‘I wish her to do always what she wishes,’ he answered.
‘She will be a very happy woman then,’ said Cri-Cri, drily.
He added, with a little hesitation: ‘It is her unlikeness to the world, her spirituality, which has charmed me; I wish her to retain them.’
‘It will be difficult,’ said the Duchesse, with a laugh. ‘Fillette,’ she said with amusement to her young cousin, ‘I do not know why you are so very solemn about it all; I assure you the soul has very little to do with marriage, as you will find out soon enough. Why should you go in retreat as if you were about to enter religion?’
Yseulte coloured; she answered timidly: ‘I am forgetting God; it is ungrateful; I am too happy; I mean—I grow selfish, I want to be quiet a little while to remember——’