the night, she placed it in my hands for approval. M. le Vicomte, it
pains me to say that there is much in the tone of that letter which I
grieve for and condemn. And it was my intention to point this out to our
sister at morning, and tell her that passages must be altered before I
could give to you the letter. Her sudden decease deprived me of this
opportunity. I could not, of course, alter or erase a line--a word. My
only option was to suppress the letter altogether, or give it you intact.
The Abbe thinks that, on the whole, my duty does not forbid the dictate
of my own impulse--my own feelings; and I now place this letter in your
hands."

De Mauleon took a packet, unsealed, from the thin white fingers of the
Superieure; and as he bent to receive it, lifted towards her eyes
eloquent with sorrowful, humble pathos, in which it was impossible for
the heart of a woman who had loved not to see a reference to the past
which the lips did not dare to utter.

A faint, scarce-perceptible blush stole over the marble cheek of the nun.
But, with an exquisite delicacy, in which survived the woman while
reigned the nun, she replied to the appeal.

"M. Victor de Mauleon, before, having thus met, we part for ever, permit
a poor _religieuse_ to say with what joy--a joy rendered happier because
it was tearful--I have learned through the Abbe Vertpre that the honour
which, as between man and man, no one who had once known you could ever
doubt, you have lived to vindicate from calumny."

"Ah; you have heard that--at last, at last!"

"I repeat--of the honour thus deferred, I never doubted." The Superieure