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an incarnate little devil, was about taking the vail in the convent of the Faubourg Saint Germain, to which she had withdrawn before her mother's marriage.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: "Well, are you happy at last?" she said. "How can I be," said Clotilde, "since you hate the man I love?" "I hate no one," replied Julia, dryly. "How is your husband?" From that moment she inquired regularly after Monsieur de Lucan in a tone of polite indifference; but she never uttered without hesitation and evident discomfort the name of the man who had taken her father's place. In the meantime she had reached her sixteenth year. Her mother's promise had been formal. Julia was henceforth free to follow her vocation, and she was preparing for it with an impatient ardor that edified the good ladies of the convent. Madame de Lucan expressing, one morning, in the presence of her mother and her husband the anxiety that oppressed her heart during these last days of respite: