The lady's supercilious look gave place just for a few seconds to one of involuntary surprise, but it soon came back again as she replied, "Mademoiselle Lacroix will pardon me if I do not allow myself to be deceived by this little scheme. I have been made so far acquainted with the circumstances of the case as to know that much deceit has been already practised, in which I believe the young baroness you speak of has not been without her share, and this may be, for aught I know, some fresh and cleverly devised phase of it. I must be excused for believing that those who had the matter in hand would not make so very silly a mistake, and I have only to communicate to mademoiselle the object with which she has been brought hither." It may well be imagined that Clotilde was not a little disconcerted both by the tone and tenor of this reply. Had she been able to frame any very definite wish during her journey, it would perhaps have been that she might meet with some such person as the Lady Superior of a religious house and claim her protection. Here she was in just such a position, yet with the clouds apparently gathering still more blackly over her. She would have been less surprised, however, had she known a little more about the antecedents of Madame de Varny, the Superior of the Ursuline Convent, the place to which she had been brought. Noble by birth, and pre-eminently lovely and accomplished, Madame de Varny had once been the proudest beauty of the court of King Louis, but having been attacked by that terrible scourge the small-pox, she had recovered only to find herself as hideous as she had once been beautiful. To be an object of loathing where she had formerly been courted and admired was more than her frivolous and worldly mind could bear, and she had retired to the seclusion of a nominally religious life, in which her rank and influence secured her the position she now enjoyed; but, like many of her class, she still clung to the world, and her intriguing disposition led her often enough to lend her aid, whenever those with whom she had been used to associate required it, to carry out some plot or scheme arising out of the debased and unscrupulous court life of that period. She was an old acquaintance of Madame de Valricour, and in her the baroness had found an able and willing confederate in the business now on hand. "Madame," said Clotilde, after a short silence, "you will believe me or not, as you think best, and will make to me what communication you choose; it rests with me to decide how I shall act upon it."