Even while Lucille spoke, she felt a powerful impulse to tell her little companion _all_--her fondness for Dubois, her aversion for Monsieur Le Prun, the scene with the strange woman, and her own forebodings; but such a confession would have been difficult to reconcile with her fixed resolution to let the affair take its course, and at all hazards marry the man whom, it was vain to disguise it from herself, she disliked, distrusted, and feared. "I was going to give you comfort by my own story. I never told you before that _I_, too, am affianced." "Affianced! and to whom?" "To the Marquis de Secqville." "Hey! Why that is the very gentleman of whom Monsieur de Blassemare told us such wicked stories the other day." "Did he?" she said, with a sigh. "Well, I often feared he was a prodigal; but heaven, I trust, will reclaim him." "But you do not love him?" "No. I never saw him but once." "And are you happy?" "Yes, quite happy now; but, dear Lucille, I was very miserable once. You must know that shortly after we were betrothed, when I was placed in the convent at Rouen, there was a nice girl there, of whom I soon grew very fond. Her brother, Henri, used to come almost every day to see her. He was about three years older than I, and so brave and beautiful. I did not know that I loved him until his sister went away, and his visits, of course, ceased; and when I could not see him any more, I thought my heart would break." "Poor little Julie!" "I was afraid of being observed when I wept, but I used to cry to myself all night long, and wish to die, as my mother used to fear long ago I would do before I came to be as old as I am now; and I could not even hear of him, for my friend, his sister, had married, and was living near Caen, and so we were quite separated." "You were, _indeed_, very miserable, my poor little friend."