At this time Laure of Le Crépuscule was sixteen years of age, and pretty as a flower to look upon. She was slim and white-faced, with immense, limpid brown eyes that were wont to move rather slowly, and burnished brown hair hanging in twists to her knees: an object for men to rave over, had any man worth so calling ever set eyes upon her. She was young enough and pure enough to be of unquestioning innocence; and, until now, the fiery life in her had found sufficient outlet in unlimited bodily exercise. She had seen nothing of real life, and never dreamed of the talent she possessed for it. It was from her own heart that the wish to consecrate herself to the eternal worship of God had come; for she believed that in this way she should find a haven for those terrible and fathomless mental storms of which she had weathered many in her young life, and of which her own mother never so much as dreamed. Utterly ignorant of her real self, she was yet a girl of strong intellect, of great versatility, of over-weening passions, and withal as feminine a creature as the Creator ever fashioned. Both her temperament and her appearance more resembled the dwellers of the far South—Provence or even Navarre—than the children of the rugged, chilly shores of northern Brittany; for her skin had the dark, creamy pallor of the South, and her eyes held none of the keen fire that glows in the North, while her hair grew low above her smooth, white brow. Laure’s temperament was dramatically mobile. She adapted herself almost unconsciously to any mode or situation of life, and this, though she did not know it, was all that she was doing now. It was with real, if subdued pleasure that she went through the services of the day. From matins, which, at this period of the year, began at the cheerless hour of four in the morning, till compline, at eight in the evening, when the church bell tolled the end of another day of prayer, Laure’s nature was under a kind of religious spell, which she and those about her had joyfully interpreted as a true vocation. The first eleven days of Laure’s convent life passed away in comparative calmness; and she found no weariness in them. On the twelfth, Madame Eleanore rode in from Le Crépuscule to see her daughter. She was admitted to the convent as speedily as if the little lay sister had known the devouring eagerness of the mother-heart; and because she was a lady of consequence, and because she was known to be very generous to the Church, and especially because the Bishop of St. Nazaire was her close friend, she was not left to wait in the reception-room, but conducted straight to the Prioress’ cell. Mère Piteuse received Madame Eleanore with anxious cordiality. After their greetings the guest seated herself, and was obliged to keep silence for a moment before she could ask quietly,—