r them. I cannot say I had any curiosity
to hear their discourse; but fearing to be suspected by them in my
amusement, and not knowing what excuse to make for being there, if I
were seen, I slid down, and lay close at the bottom of the confessional.
They happened to place themselves very near me; and the abbess taking a
letter out of her pocket, bad Clara read it, and tell her the substance
of it as well as she could. I found it was in French, by some words
which she was obliged to repeat over and over, before, not perfectly
understanding the language, she could be able to find a proper
interpretation of. The abbess, who has a little smattering of it
herself, sometimes helped her out, and between them both I soon found it
came from monsieur du Plessis, and contained the most tender and
compassionate complaint of your unkindness in not answering his
letter;--that the symptoms he had of approaching death were not half so
severe to him as your refusing him a consolation he stood for much in
need of;--that if you found him unworthy of your love, he was certainly
so of your compassion; and concluded with the most earnest entreaty, you
would suffer him to continue no longer in a suspence more cruel than a
thousand deaths could be.

Oh heaven! cried Louisa, bursting into tears, how ungrateful must he
think me, and how can I return, as it deserves, so unexampled a
constancy, after such seeming proofs of my infidelity!--. Cruel, cruel,
treacherous abbess! pursued she; Is this the fruits of all your boasted
sanctity!--This the return to the confidence the generous du Plessis
reposed in you!--This your love and friendship to me!--Does heaven, to
increase the number of its votaries, require you to be false,
perfidious, and injurious to the world!

She was proceeding in giving vent to the anguish of her soul in
exclamations such as these; but Leonora begged she would moderate her
grief, and for her sake, as much as possible, conceal the reasons she
had for resentment. Louisa again promised she would do her utmost to
keep them from thinking she even suspected they had played her
false;--then cried, But tell me, my dear Leonora, were they not a little
moved at the tender melancholy which, I perceive, ran thro' this
epistle? Alas! my dear, replied the other, they have long since forgot
those soft emotions which make us simpathize in the woes of
love:--inflexible by the rigid rules of this place, and more by their
own age, they rather