Père de Mereil, of the Seminary, who spoke the English language and devoted himself especially to the conversion of heretics, declared enthusiastically that this young girl was the most interesting convert he had ever been privileged to instruct. If the English captive were occasionally betrayed into frivolity by the levity of youth, the worthy priest ascribed these lapses entirely to the worldly influence of Mademoiselle de Monesthrol. Lydia had an easy way of explaining herself to be always in the right, and it would be unjust to attribute the pretty creature’s innocent vanity and frank simplicity to other than natural childish frailty. Heedlessly generous with the divine faith of youth, Diane de Monesthrol gave her love to the stranger. During the long illness which followed Lydia’s removal to Ville Marie, Diane nursed her with tender care, and in her helplessness she had twined herself around the closest fibres of Diane’s heart. She might not be either very strong or very wise, but she was her own pet, the joint protégé of herself and du Chesne. Lydia’s trials and sufferings invested her with a halo of romantic interest. Diane’s own glowing imagination conferred upon the Puritan maiden qualities of which the stranger had formed no conception. Her pure and simple beauty would have shone alike at a cottage door and in the halls of princes. Lydia rejoiced in the sweet and exhilarating consciousness of an approving Providence. She found herself placed exactly to her taste. Dreading pain, she was only too well pleased to be allowed to forget the past; finding herself flattered and caressed, she desired nothing better than to enjoy the present. An orphan, thrown upon the charity of distant and reluctant relatives, her life had not been happy. She had no enthusiasm, no imagination, no warm human sympathy to render the severe existence of her childhood endurable. Without in the least realizing it, Lydia had been bored to extinction. She hated now to think of those long, unlovely years of repression of her natural faculties. She had been accustomed to be looked down upon by her thrifty England kindred, who had felt no hesitation in sharply chiding her shortcomings. There her beauty had been of small account; she had no chance of wearing beautiful clothes, and had never listened to the sweet accents of flattery. Her various misdeeds had been severely visited upon her, her frailties exposed to open scorn, with the cheerful prospect held over her that in another existence these trifling vanities should be still more actively rued in fire and brimstone.