o be
presented to a Mrs. Willcoxen, and never am gratified; why is that?"

"Perhaps I believe in the celibacy of the clergy."

"Perhaps you have never recovered the disappointment of losing Miss Le
Roy?"

"Ah! Cloudy, people who live in glass houses should not throw stones; I
suspect you judge me by yourself. How is it with you, Cloudy? Has no
fair maiden been able to teach you to forget your boy-love for
Jacquelina?"

Cloudy winced, but tried to cover his embarrassment with a laugh.

"Oh! I have been in love forty dozen times. I'm always in love; my heart
is continually going through a circle from one fit to another, like the
sun through the signs of the zodiac; only it never comes to anything."

"Well, at least little Jacko is forgotten, which is one congratulatory
circumstance."

"No, she is not forgotten; I will not wrong her by saying that she is,
or could be! All other loves are merely the foreign ports, which my
heart visits transiently now and then. Lina is its native home. I don't
know how it is. With most cases of disappointment, such as yours with
Miss Le Roy, I suppose the regret may be short-lived enough; but when an
affection has been part and parcel of one's being from infancy up; why,
it is in one's soul and heart and blood, so to speak--is identical with
one's consciousness, and inseparable from one's life."

"Do you ever see her?"

"See her! yes; but how?--at each return from a voyage. I may see
her once, with an iron grating between us; she disguised with her
black shrouding robe and veil, and thinking that she must suffer
here to expiate the fate of Dr. Grimshaw, who, scorpion-like, stung
himself to death with the venom of his own bad passions. She is a
Sister of Mercy, devoted to good works, and leaves her convent only
in times of war, plague, pestilence or famine, to minister to the
suffering. She nursed me through the yellow fever, when I lay in the
hospital at New Orleans, but when I got well enough to recognize her she
vanished--evaporated--made herself 'thin air,' and another Sister served
in her place."

"Have you ever seen her since?"

"Yes, once; I sought out her convent, and went with the fixed
determination to reason with her, and to persuade her not to renew her
vows for another year--you know, the Sisters only take vows for a year
at a time."

"Did you make any impression on her mind?" inquired Thurston, with more
interest than he had yet shown m any part of the story.