Lying upon the sweet-scented bed which the hospitality of the
Derouledes had provided for her, she seemed to see passing before her
the spectres of these past ten years--the first four, after her
brothers death, until the old Duc de Marny's body slowly followed his
soul to its grave.

After that last glimmer of life beside the deathbed of his son, the
old Duc had practically ceased to be. A mute, shrunken figure, he
merely existed; his mind vanished, his memory gone, a wreck whom
Nature fortunately remembered at last, and finally took away from the
invalid chair which had been his world.

Then came those few years at the Convent of the Ursulines. Juliette
had hoped that she had a vocation; her whole soul yearned for a
secluded, a religious, life, for great barriers of solemn vows and
days spent in prayer and contemplation, to interpose between herself
and the memory of that awful night when, obedient to her father's
will, she had made the solemn oath to avenge her brother's death.

She was only eighteen when she first entered the convent, directly
after her father's death, when she felt very lonely--both morally and
mentally lonely--and followed by the obsession of that oath.

She never spoke of it to anyone except to her confessor, and he, a
simple-minded man of great learning and a total lack of knowledge of
the world, was completely at a loss how to advise.

The Archbishop was consulted. He could grant a dispensation, and
release her of that most solemn vow.