It was not one of the least of my troubles that I felt all my love for Andrew revive again. I began to doubt the truth of the stories I had heard, and to wonder whether they had not been invented for the very sake of entrapping me. Doubt soon grew into conviction, and, reasonably or unreasonably, I no more believed that Andrew was married than that I was. No, he would return in a year—return to claim me and to find that I was lost to him, to truth, and heaven forever. It was in the church where I was kneeling for the first time since my illness that this thought came to me, and I cast myself on the ground and groaned almost aloud. My aunt observed the movement, as indeed nothing escaped her eyes, and when she returned she remarked upon it, saying that such a display of devotion, however commendable in private, was not in good taste in such a public place, and that I would do well to restrain myself. About this time Father Martien was called away, and I made my confessions to a fat old priest at our parish church, who, I am persuaded, used to doze through half the time of confession and take snuff the other half. He was very kind, however, and gave me easy penances and plentiful absolutions. My religion had by this time become the merest form, kept up to save appearances, but now and then would recur the thought that perhaps Father Martien was right after all, and if so why I was living in mortal sin, a sacrilegious person for whom millions of ages in purgatory would be of no avail. Thus I was tossed from one doubt to another, and found comfort nowhere. The discomfort of my mind could not but react upon my body. I grew pale, sallow, and was miserably unwell. My aunt lamented the loss of my beauty, and predicted that I should never find a husband. A husband indeed was what I now feared most of all. I determined that I would die before I would accept one, and then came the thought that not death would be the alternative but a convent. No, there was no hope anywhere. [Illustration] CHAPTER XIX. ANOTHER CHANGE. WE remained in the neighborhood of Paris all that winter, sometimes at Fontainebleau, sometimes in the city itself, for, as I have said, my uncle had some office or command which kept him about the court. My aunt had her balls and assemblies, her grand banquets and little suppers, and must have spent a great deal of money. I rarely saw anything of this gaiety, though I went out with my aunt in the carriage, and now and then, when she had a small assembly, I was allowed to sit at her elbow and look on, though I was not expected to speak unless spoken to, and then only in the shortest, most restrained manner.