“Monseigneur, I am a young girl without parents, but with fortune enough to make suitors troublesome. How can I take none but wise steps? I want to be let alone to think my thoughts, and that was not permitted me in France.” “We will have further talk to-morrow and next week,” concluded the bishop. “We will see how your resolution holds out. At this hour I go to the governor’s council. Receive my benediction.” He abruptly lifted his hands and placed them above her bowed head for an instant’s articulation of Latin, then left the room. As long as his elastic, quick tread could be heard, Mademoiselle Laval stood still. It died away. She turned around and faced her companion with a long breath. “That is over! Louise, do you think after fifteen years of convent life I shall cease to have blood in me?” “Not at all, Mademoiselle Claire,” responded Louise literally. “As long as we live we have blood.” “He is terrible.” “He is such a holy man, mademoiselle; how can he help being terrible? You know Madame Bourdon told us he ate rotten meat to mortify his flesh, and his servant has orders never to make his bed or pick the fleas out of it. I myself have no vocation to be holy, mademoiselle. I so much like being comfortable and clean.” Claire sat down upon the only bench which furnished ease to this convent parlor. Louise was leaning against the stone wall near her. Such luxuries as came out from France at that date were not for nuns or missionary priests, though the Church was then laying deep foundations in vast grants of land which have enriched it. “I do not love the dirty side of holiness myself,” said Claire. “They must pick the fleas out of my bed if I endow this convent. And I do not like trotting, fussy nuns who tell tales of each other and interfere with one. But, O Louise! how I could adore a saint--a saint who would lead me in some high act which I could perform!” “The best thing next to a live saint,” remarked Louise, “is a dead saint’s bone which will heal maladies. But, mademoiselle,--the Virgin forgive me!--I would rather see my own mother this day than any saint, alive or dead.” “The good Marguerite! How strange it must seem to her that you and I have been driven this long journey--if the dead know anything about us.” “She would be glad I was in the ship to wait upon you, mademoiselle. And I must have done poorly for myself in Rouen. Our curé said great matches were made out here.” “Now, tell me, Louise, have you the courage for this?” “I am here and must do my duty, mademoiselle.” “But can you marry a strange man this evening or to-morrow morning and go off with him to his strange home, to bear whatever he may inflict on you?” “My mother told me,” imparted Louise, gazing at the floor, where lay two or three rugs made by the nuns themselves, “that the worst thing about a man is his relatives. And if he lives by himself in the woods, these drawbacks will be away.” “You have no terror of the man himself?”