becoming her aunt's rival in the affections of Louis XIV, goes secretly
into the country to visit her friends M. and Mme Valier, where she falls
in love with De L'Amye, a married gentleman. Summoned back to court by
the amorous monarch, Lasselia chooses rather to flee from the protection
of her friends in the disguise of a pilgrim, and led by lucky chance
casts herself on the protection of her lover, who conveys her to a
country inn and there maintains her for some time to their mutual
felicity. Mile Douxmourie, once affianced to De L'Amye but jilted by
him, accidentally discovers the pair and immediately communicates with
the gallant's wife, who with the Valiers soon appears to reclaim the
recreants. The wife rages at her husband, he at the perfidious
Douxmourie, while Lasselia offers to stab herself. By the good offices
of her friends, however, the girl is persuaded to enter a nunnery where
she becomes a pattern of piety. De L'Amye is reconciled to his wife.

In the first few pages of the story the author makes a noteworthy
attempt to create an atmosphere of impending disaster. When De L'Amye
first meets the heroine, three drops of blood fall from his nose and
stain the white handkerchief in her hand, and the company rallies him on
this sign of an approaching union, much to his wife's discomfiture. The
accident and her yet unrecognized love fill Lasselia's mind with uneasy
forebodings. "She wou'd start like one in a Frenzy, and cry out, Oh! it
was not for nothing that those ominous Drops of Blood fell from him on
my Handkerchief!--It was not for nothing I was seiz'd with such an
unusual Horror--Nor is it in vain, that my Soul shrinks, and seems to
dread a second Interview!--They are all, I fear, too sure Predictions of
some fatal Consequence." These gloomy thoughts at length give way to an
ecstasy of despairing love, and when her affection is reciprocated, to a
series of passionate letters and poems, which indeed make necessary the
author's apology for the "too great Warmth" of the style.