"That should make you the more pitiful, madame, for such as I. Let me go, madame, to a nunnery--even to that of Our Lady of Lespaille--but spare me this!"
"It is impossible," she said sharply. "See, here is Madame de Martigny come, and she will conduct you to your room. Tush! It is nothing after all, girl. And it will be better than a convent and a lost name. Do not make a scene."
I rose to my feet stunned and bewildered, and Madame de Martigny put her arm through mine, and dried my eyes with her kerchief.
"Come, mademoiselle," she said, "we have to pass through the corridor to gain your apartment. Keep up your heart!"
"I offer my escort," mocked the dwarf, "and will go so far as to take M. de Lorgnac's place, if your royal pleasure will allow--ah! ah!"--and he broke into a shriek, for Catherine had swiftly and silently raised a dog-whip, and brought it across his shoulders as he sat crouching at her feet.
"Begone!" she said. "Another speech like that and I break you on the wheel!" Then she turned to Madame de Martigny.
"Take her away by the private door. She is not fit to see or be seen now. Tell Pare to give her a cordial if she needs it, and see that she is ready in time. Go, mademoiselle, and be a brave girl!"
CHAPTER II.
[THE ORATORY]
You who read this will please remember that I was but a girl, and that my powers of resistance were limited. Some of you, perhaps, may have gone through the same ordeal, not in the rough-and-ready way that I had to make the passage, but through a slower if not less certain mill. The result being the same in both cases, to wit, that you have stood, as I did, at the altar with vows on your lips that you felt in your heart were false.