"You may well say that," replied the woman; "had I not known her quite a
little girl? and to see her die, in the prime of her youth and beauty,
not four-and-twenty years of age. You may well say I was sorry. If her
poor father could have seen it, it would have broke his heart; but he
died long before that, or many another thing would have broken his heart
as well as that."

"Was her father living," demanded the stranger, "when she married
Colonel Sherbrooke?"

The woman, without replying, gazed inquiringly and steadfastly on the
stranger's countenance for a moment or two; who continued, after a short
pause--"Poo, poo, I know all about it; I mean, when she came away with
him."

"No, sir," replied the woman; "he had been dead then more than a year."

"Doubtless," replied the stranger, "it was, as you implied, a happy
thing for him that he did not live to see his daughter's fate; but how
was it, I wonder, as she was so sweet a creature, and the Colonel so
fond of her, that he never married her?"

The woman looked down for a moment; but then gazed up in his face with a
somewhat rueful expression of countenance, and a shake of the head,
answering, "She was a Protestant, you know."

The stranger looked surprised, and asked, "Did she always continue a
Protestant, my good woman? I should have thought love could have worked
more wonderful conversions than that."