d, his impatience was so great
that he could not leave the ladies to go home alone, but came at once to
make his bow to "his little wife." They bashfully greeted each other in
the Cathedral porch in the presence of the congregation. Madame Bontems
was tremulous with pride as she took the Comte de Granville's arm,
though he, forced to offer it in the presence of all the world was vexed
enough with his son for his ill-advised impatience.

For about a fortnight, between the official announcement of the intended
marriage of the Vicomte de Granville to Mademoiselle Bontems and the
solemn day of the wedding, he came assiduously to visit his lady-love in
the dismal drawing-room, to which he became accustomed. His long calls
were devoted to watching Angelique's character; for his prudence,
happily, had made itself heard again in the day after their first
meeting. He always found her seated at a little table of some West
Indian wood, and engaged in marking the linen of her trousseau.
Angelique never spoke first on the subject of religion. If the young
lawyer amused himself with fingering the handsome rosary that she kept
in a little green velvet bag, if he laughed as he looked at a relic such
as usually is attached to this means of grace, Angelique would gently
take the rosary out of his hands and replace it in the bag without a
word, putting it away at once. When, now and then, Granville was so bold
as to make mischievous remarks as to certain religious practices, the
pretty girl listened to him with the obstinate smile of assurance.

"You must either believe nothing, or believe everything the Church
teaches," she would say. "Would you wish to have a woman without a
religion as the mother of your children?--No.--What man may dare judge
as between disbelievers and God? And how can I then blame what the
Church allows?"

Angelique appeared to be animated by such fervent charity, the young man
saw her look at him with such perfect conviction, that he sometimes felt
tempted to embrace her religious views; her firm belief that she was in
the only right road aroused doubts in his mind, which she tried to turn
to account.

But then Granville committed the fatal blunder of mistaking the
enchantment of desire for that of love. Angelique was so happy in
reconciling the voice of her heart with that of duty, by giving way to
a liking that had grown up with her from childhood, that the deluded man
could not discern which of the two spoke