' He remained, therefore, as
poor as ever.
"His wife died, I believe, while he was at Jersey, and he had a
daughter who was born about the same time. She was a tall and handsome
girl (you have only known her since she has lost her freshness), with
much natural vigour, a beautiful complexion, and no lack of generous
blood running through her veins. She ought to have been married
young, but that was out of the question, for those wretched little
starvelings of nobles in the small towns, who are good for nothing,
and not to be compared with him, would not have heard of her for their
sons. As a matter of etiquette she could not marry a peasant, and
so the poor girl remained, as it were, in mid-air, like a wandering
spirit. There was no place for her on earth. Her father was the last
of his race, and it seemed as if she had been brought into the world
with the destiny of not finding a place for herself in it. Endowed
with great physical beauty, she scarcely had any soul, and with her
instinct was everything. She would have made an excellent mother, but
failing marriage a religious vocation would have suited her best,
as the regular and austere mode of life would have calmed her
temperament. But her father, doubtless, could not afford to provide
her with a dowry, and his social condition forbade the idea of making
her a lay-sister. Poor girl, driven into the wrong path, she was fated
to meet her doom there. She was naturally upright and good, with a
full knowledge of her duties, and her only fault was that she had
blood in her veins.
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