Madame de Beaufoy was in her chamber: it is the custom you know to receive visitors in the bed-chambers in France: a handsomely furnished room, the counterpane a blue satin, richly quilted, and the large square pillows, lying on it, of the finest cambric edged with choice Mechlin lace. As she held Mr. St. John's hand in greeting and drew him to the fire, the tears coursed freely down the fine old face. "Ah, my friend, my friend!" she said, speaking in English, "if they had but suffered her to marry you, she might not be lying low this day. A hundred times I have said to Maria, that she should not have been severed from Frederick St. John. But Maria, poor thing, had no hand in it; she is not a dévote; it was the Church that did it. And we must suppose all's for the best, though it sacrificed her." No tears shone in his eyes, his grief was too deep for that. It could be read in every line of his face, of his rigid features. "I wish to Heaven things had been allowed to take a different course," he answered in low tones. "But they tell me that no care, no amount of happiness could have saved her." "Tush!" returned the old lady. "The greatest mistake they made was in not taking her to a warmer climate while they had the opportunity. Had that been done, and had you been allowed to marry her, she might have enjoyed years of life. I don't say she could have lived to be old: they insist upon it that she could not: but she would have had some enjoyment of this world, poor child, and not have been cut off from it, as she is now." The thought crossed him--and it came in spite of his regrets, and he could not help it--that all things might still be for the best. Had she lived to bear him children--and to entail upon them her fragility of constitution---- "You did love her, Mr. St. John." "With my whole heart and soul." "Ay, ay; and she was bound up in you, I don't see why you should have been parted--and we all liked you. For my part," continued the tolerant old lady--"but you know it doesn't do to avow such sentiments to the world--I think one religion is as good as another, provided people do their duty in it. She had as sure a chance of going to heaven as your wife, as she had if she had married that de la Chasse, whom I never liked." "Indeed I trust so." "I became a Roman Catholic to please my husband and his family, but I was just as near to heaven when I was a Protestant. And I say that Adeline need not have been sacrificed. You have been in to see her, I hear." "Yes. Not knowing what I was going to see." "Was ever such a barbarous custom heard of! But Maria would listen to no sort of reason: and Agnes upheld her. I wonder the Signor allowed it. They will not get me in. I shall see the dear lost one in her coffin tonight; but I will not see her the actor in all that mummery."