“Then why not decide at once, dearest Ghita, to throw the weight of your sorrows on the shoulders of one strong enough to bear them?  You care not for dress or gay appearances, and can take a bridegroom even with the miserable aspect of a lazzarone, when you know the heart is right.  You will not despise me because I am not decked as I might be for the bridal.  Nothing is easier than to find an altar and a priest among these monasteries; and the hour for saying mass is not very distant.  Give me a right to claim you, and I will appoint a place of rendezvous, bring in the lugger to-morrow night, and carry you off in triumph to our gay Provence; where you will find hearts gentle as your own, to welcome you with joy, and call you sister.”

Raoul was earnest in his manner, and it was not possible to doubt his sincerity.  Though an air of self-satisfaction gleamed in his face, when he alluded to his present personal appearance, for he well knew all his advantages in that way, in spite of the dress of a lazzarone.

“Urge me not, dear Raoul,” Ghita answered, though, unconsciously to herself, she pressed closer to his side, and both sadness and love were in the very tones of her voice; “urge me not, dear Raoul; this can never be.  I have already told you the gulf that lies between us; you will not cross it, to join me, and I cannot cross it, to join you.  Nothing but that could separate us; but that, to my eyes, grows broader and deeper every hour.”

“Ah, Ghita, thou deceivest me, and thyself.  Were thy feelings as thou fanciest, no human inducement could lead thee to reject me.”

“It is not a human inducement, Raoul; it is one above earth, and all it holds.”

“Peste!  These priests are scourges sent to torment men in every shape!  They inflict hard lessons in childhood, teach asperity in youth, and make us superstitious and silly in age.  I do not wonder that my brave compatriots drove them from France; they did nothing but devour like locusts, and deface the beauties of providence.”

“Raoul, thou art speaking of the ministers of God!” Ghita observed meekly, but in sorrow.

“Pardon me, dearest Ghita; I have no patience when I remember what a trifle, after all, threatens to tear us asunder.  Thou pretendest to love me?”

“It is not pretence, Raoul, but a deep and, I fear, a painful reality.”

“To think that a girl so frank, with a heart so tender, and a soul so true, will allow any secondary thing to divide her from the man of her choice!”

“It is not a secondary, but a primary thing, Raoul; oh! that I could make thee think so.  The question is between thee and God—­were it aught else, thou might’st indeed prevail.”

“Why trouble thyself about my religion at all?  Are there not thousands of wives who tell their beads, and repeat their aves, while their husbands think of anything but heaven?  Thou and I can overlook this difference; others overlook them, and keep but one heart between them still.  I never would molest thee, Ghita, in thy gentle worship.”