A Novel By Henrietta Dana Skinner AUTHOR OF 44 "A Queen at School" Pancho's Happy Family" "Love Songs of the Tuscan Peasantry" etc. THIS STORY OF A LOVE, FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH 1s Inscribed to the Memory of MERCEDES QUEEN OF SPAIN BORN JUNE 24, 1860; DIED JUNE 26, 1878 "Fidelis usque ad mortem" ESPÍRITU SANTO CHAPTER I "Veni, lumen cordium."-Whitsuntide Prose. IT was the feast of Pentecost. Paris was flooded with June sunshine, and its streets were gay with life. The city on a holiday is like one great family-fathers, mothers, and children, sisters, brothers, and lovers in happy groups sauntering through the Champs-Elysées and the Cours la Reine, or walking merrily off to the more distant parks and promenades of the suburbs. The Whitsunday church-going had by many been done early in the morning at one of the low Masses, and now the whole, beautiful, bright day was before them for their out-of-door holiday-making. The boulevards were thronged and the late breakfast was being taken, French fashion, on the broad sidewalks, at tiny tables in front of the numerous cafés, and the air was full of the hum of gay conversation. Not for all, however, had the church-going been disposed of early. At eleven o'clock the pomp and ceremony of High Mass began in those edifices that are the glory of Christian Paris. The fashionable churches of the Champs-Elysées and the boulevards-the grand Metropolitan church, and innumerable others, ancient |