"Ah, madame," said she, "it is but putting into words the thoughts that are always in my head! I have never related the sad tale but twice; for I would not, for my dear mistress's sake, speak of such things to the people about her; but each time I slept better afterward. I seemed to have lightened the heaviness of my burthen by imparting the secret to another." "You were very much attached to Mademoiselle de Beaugency?" said I. "My mother was her nurse, madame, but we grew up like sisters," answered Rosina. "She never concealed a thought from me; and the Virgin knows her thoughts will never keep me an hour out of Paradise, for there was no more sin in them than a butterfly's wing might bear." "I suppose she suffered a great deal when she heard of her cousin's death?" said I. "How long was it before she married the count? For she did marry him, I conclude, from what I have heard?" "Ay, madame, she did, about a year after the--the news came, worse luck! Not that she was unhappy with him exactly. He did not treat her ill; far from it; for he was passionately fond of her. But he was jealous--heavens knows of whom, for he had nobody to be jealous of. But he loved like a hot-blooded Spaniard, as he was; and I suppose he felt that she did not return his love in the same way. How should she, when she had given her whole heart to her cousin? Still she liked the count, and I could not say they were unhappy together; but she did not like Spain, and the people she lived among there. The count's place was dreadfully gloomy, certainly. For my part, I used to be afraid to go at night along the vaulted passages, and up those wide, dark staircases, to my bed. But the count doted on it because it had belonged to the family time out of mind; and it was only to please her that he ever came to her family home at all." "But surely this place is very dismal, too?" said I. "Dismal!" said she. "Ay, now, I daresay, because there's a curse on it; but not then. Oh, it was a pleasant place in old M. de Beaugency's time! besides, my poor mistress loved it for the sake of the happy days she had seen there; and when the period approached that she was to be confined of her first child, she entreated her husband to bring her here. She wanted to have my mother with her, who had been like a mother to her; and as she told him she was sure she should die if he kept her in Catalonia, he yielded to her wishes, and we came. The doctor was spoken to, and everything arranged; and she was so pleased, poor thing, at the thoughts of having a baby, that as we used to sit together making the clothes for the little creature that was expected, she chatted away so gayly about what she would do with it, and how we should bring it up, that I saw she was now really beginning to forget that she was not married to the husband her young heart had chosen.