d; and yet he was as
ignorant of the wily ways of a wily woman as if he had never been out of
the wilderness. Victorine's tears smote on him poignantly.

"Thou poor child!" he said most kindly, "do not weep. Thou hast done no
harm. I bear no ill will to thine aunt, and never did; and if I had,
thou wouldst have disarmed it. This inn seems to me no place for a young
maiden like thee."

Victorine glanced cautiously around her, and whispered: "It were
ungrateful in me to say as much; but oh, sir, if thou didst but know how
I wish myself back in the convent! I like not the ways of this place;
and I fear so much the men who are often here. When thou didst speak at
first I did think thou wert like them; but now I perceive that thou art
quite different. Thou seemest to me like the men of whom Sister Clarice
did tell me." Victorine stopped, called up a blush to her cheeks, and
said: "But I must not stay talking with thee. My aunt will be looking
for me."

"Stay," said Willan. "What did the Sister Clarice tell thee of men? I
thought not that nuns conversed on such matters."

"Oh!" replied Victorine, innocently, "it was different with the Sister
Clarice. She was a noble lady who had been betrothed, and her betrothed
died; and it was because there were none left so noble and so good as
he, she said, that she had taken the veil and would die in the convent.
She did talk to me whole nights about this young lord whom she was to
have wed, and she did think often that she saw his face look down
through the roof of the cell."

Clever Victorine! She had invented this tale on the spur of the instant.
She could not have done better if she had plotted long to devise a
method of flattering Willan Blaycke. It is strange how like inspiration
are the impulses of artful women at times. It would seem wellnigh
certain that they must be prompted by malicious fiends wishing to lure
men on to destruction in the surest way.

Victorine had talked with Willan perhaps five minutes. In that space of
time she had persuaded him of four things, all false,--that she was an
innocent, guileless girl; that she had been seized with a sudden and
reverential admiration for him; that she had no greater desire in life
than to be back again in the safe shelter of the convent; and that her
aunt Jeanne had never said an ill-word of him.

"Victorine! Victorine!" called a sharp loud voice,--the voice of
Jeanne,--who would have bitten her tongue out rather than hav