ruin herself. So she
lifted her up, and led her straight to her room, where she found
herself quite flayed, and her linen covered with blood.

Why did Girard fail her amidst these struggles inward and from
without? She could not make him out. She had much need of support, and
yet he never came, except for one moment at rare intervals, to the
parlour.

She wrote to him on the 28th June, by her brothers; for though she
could read, she was scarcely able to write. She called to him in the
most stirring, the most urgent tones, and he answers by putting her
off. He has to preach at Hyeres, he has a sore throat, and so on.

Wonderful to tell, it is the abbess herself who brings him thither. No
doubt she was uneasy at Cadiere's discovering so much of the inner
life of the convent. Making sure that the girl would talk of it to
Girard, she wished to forestal her. In a very flattering and tender
note of the 3rd July, she besought the Jesuit to come and see herself
first, for she longed, between themselves, to be his pupil, his
disciple, as humble Nicodemus had been of Christ. "Under your
guidance, by the blessing of that holy freedom which my post ensures
me, I should move forward swiftly and noiselessly in the path of
virtue. The state of our young candidate here will serve me as a fair
and useful pretext."

A startling, ill-considered step, betraying some unsoundness in the
lady's mind. Having failed to supplant Girard with Cadiere, she now
essayed to supplant Cadiere with Girard. Abruptly, without the least
preface, she stepped forward. She made her decision, like a great
lady, who was still agreeable and quite sure of being taken at her
word, who would go so far as even to talk of the _freedom_ she
enjoyed!

In taking so false a step she started from a true belief that Girard
had ceased to care much for Cadiere. But she might have guessed that
he had other things to perplex him in Toulon. He was disturbed by an
affair no longer turning upon a young girl, but on a lady of ripe age,
easy circumstances, and good standing; on his wisest penitent, Mdlle.
Gravier. Her forty years failed to protect her. He would have no
self-governed sheep in his fold. One day, to her surprise and
mortification, she found herself pregnant, and loud was her wail
thereat.

Taken up with this new adventure, Girard looked but coldly on the
abbess's unforeseen advances. He mistrusted them as a trap laid for
him by the Observantines. He resolved t