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Page 43
"Why, she is almost fifteen, and I'm not sorry for it, by the way, for,
_entre nous_, we may reasonably hope to get honestly rid of her within a
year or two. Oh! she will have no trouble in getting married, no trouble
whatever, you may be sure. In the first place she is rich, and then, after
all, she is a pretty monster, there is no gainsaying that, and there is no
lack of men who admire that style."
Clotilde joined them at last. Whatever might have been her inward emotion,
she appeared calm, having nothing theatrical in her ways. She replied
simply, in a low and gentle voice, to her mother's feverish questions; she
remained convinced that this misfortune would not have happened, if she
could have herself informed Julia, with some precautions, of the event
which chance had abruptly revealed to her. Addressing then a sad smile to
Monsieur de Lucan:
"These family difficulties, sir," she said to him, "could not have formed
a part of your anticipations, and I should deem it quite natural were they
to lead to some modification of your plans.":
An expressive anxiety became depicted upon Lucan's features. "If you ask
me to restore to you your freedom," he said, "I cannot but comply; if it
is your delicacy alone that has spoken, I beg to assure you that you are
still dearer to me since I have seen you suffer on my account, and suffer
with so much dignity."
She held out her hand, which he seized, bowing low at the same time.
"I shall love your daughter so much," he said, "that she will forgive me."
"Yes, I hope so," said Clotilde; "nevertheless, she wishes to enter a
convent for a few months, and I have consented."
Her voice trembled and her eyes became moist.
"Excuse me, sir," she added; "I have no right as yet to make you
participate to such an extent in my sorrows. May I beg of you to leave me
alone with my mother?"
Lucan murmured a few words of respect, and withdrew. It was quite true, as
he had said, that Clotilde was dearer to him than ever. Nothing had
inspired him with such a lofty idea of the moral worth of that woman as
her attitude during that trying evening. Stricken in the midst of her
flight of happiness, she had fallen without a cry, without a groan,
striving to hide her wound; she had manifested in his presence that
exquisite modesty in suffering so rare among her sex. He was the more
grateful to her for it, that he was deeply averse to those pathetic and
turbulent demonstrations which most women never fail to eagerly exhibit on
every occasion, when they are indeed kind enough not to bring them about.
CHAPTER III.
JULIA'S CHAMPION.
Monsieur de Lucan had been Clotilde's husband for several months when the
rumor spread among society that Mademoiselle de Trecoeur, formerly known
as such an incarnate little devil, was about taking the vail in the
convent of the Faubourg Saint Germain, to which she had withdrawn before
her mother's marriage. That rumor was well founded. Julia had endured at
first with some difficulty the discipline and the observances to which the
simple boarders of the establishment were themselves bound to submit; then
she had been gradually taken with a pious fervor, the excesses of which
they had been compelled to moderate. She had begged her mother not to put
an obstacle to the irresistible inclination which she felt for a religious
life, and Clotilde had with difficulty obtained permission that she should
adjourn her resolution until the accomplishment of her sixteenth year.
Madame de Lucan's relations with her daughter since her marriage had been
of a singular character. She came almost daily to visit her, and always
received the liveliest manifestations of affection at her hands; but on
two points, and those the most sensitive, the young girl had remained
inflexible; she had never consented either to return to the maternal roof,
nor to see her mother's husband.
She had even remained for a long time without making the slightest
allusion to Clotilde's altered situation, which she affected to ignore.
One day, at last, feeling the intolerable torture of such a reserve, she
made up her mind, and fixing her flashing eyes upon her mother:
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