"The pleasure with which we shall watch your success in society will
atone for the disappointment we felt at your change of vocation," he
said. Then, turning to my mother, "Do you know that she is going to
turn out very pretty, and you will be proud of her some day?--Here is
your brother, Rhetore.--Alphonse," he said to a fine young man who
came in, "here is your convent-bred sister, who threatens to send her
nun's frock to the deuce."

My brother came up in a leisurely way and took my hand, which he
pressed.

"Come, come, you may kiss her," said my father.

And he kissed me on both cheeks.

"I am delighted to see you," he said, "and I take your side against my
father."

I thanked him, but could not help thinking he might have come to Blois
when he was at Orleans visiting our Marquis brother in his quarters.

Fearing the arrival of strangers, I now withdrew. I tidied up my
rooms, and laid out on the scarlet velvet of my lovely table all the
materials necessary for writing to you, meditating all the while on my
new situation.

This, my fair sweetheart, is a true and veracious account of the
return of a girl of eighteen, after an absence of nine years, to the
bosom of one of the noblest families in the kingdom. I was tired by
the journey as well as by all the emotions I had been through, so I