"I am ready, father," she said; "I hope God has forgiven me the little
sins of yesterday."

"Will you swear, my child?"

"What, father?"

"That you will avenge your brother's death on his murderer?"

"But, father..."

"Swear it, my child!"

"How can I fulfil that oath, father?--I don't understand..."

"God will guide you, my child. When you are older you will
understand."

For a moment Juliette still hesitated. She was just on that
borderland between childhood and womanhood when all the sensibilities,
the nervous system, the emotions, are strung to their highest pitch.

Throughout her short life she had worshipped her father with a
whole-hearted, passionate devotion, which had completely blinded her
to his weakening faculties and the feebleness of his mind.

She was also in that initial stage of enthusiastic piety which
overwhelms every girl of temperament, if she be brought up in the
Roman Catholic religion, when she is first initiated into the