It was only in France that a high-born and beautiful girl could be sacrificed thus because she had no dower. Everywhere else women without dowers were sought and taken in marriage every day. As if a few hundred thousand francs were needful to make youth, and loveliness, and purity, and high lineage, acceptable to men!
'You know my cousin the Duc very well?' she said timidly after a long silence.
'We have lived in the same world; I have not been intimate with him.'
'Do you think he would be very vexed if I asked Nicole--that is, my foster-mother--to sell this locket for me?'
'I fear he would not be best pleased. Why should you wish to sell it?'
She hesitated, then answered: 'I want to buy the vicar that new gown he wants so much. He will never spend a centime on himself, and his gown has been mended and mended and mended; it is all a patchwork, and even that is dropping to pieces, and the bishop's visitation is near at hand. I thought the value of this locket would buy a priest's gown, if my cousin de Vannes would not be angry.'
'That is a pretty thought of you; it would certainly buy many _soutanes_,' said Othmar. 'But I think Alain would not be at all pleased if you sold his present; and I told you the other day that I will give the curé a new gown myself with the very utmost pleasure. You say that I belong to his parish.'
She smiled; nevertheless, she hesitated to accept his offer.
'You must have so many things to give. Nicole says that people are always asking you for things.'
'They do not always get them,' replied Othmar, with a smile. 'If they wished only for such useful and harmless things as _soutanes_, they should always have their wish.'
'Are you so immensely rich then?' she asked him, opening widely her golden-brown eyes, which looked as if the sunshine was always shining in them.
'To my misfortune,' said Othmar, annoyed. Could not even a child of sixteen out of a convent forget his riches? Was it possible she too was going to ask him for something?
'I wonder you do not build a cathedral,' she said, after a pause.
'A cathedral!' he echoed, in surprise. 'I would if I had the faith of those who used to do so.'
'It is what I would do if I had money,' said she, still very gravely. 'I would build one in the heart of a forest, with the deer and the birds all round it; not jammed up amongst streets and crowds like Nôtre Dame or Chartres.'