There remained little time for further explanations. The refectory bell was ringing, and Cerise must hurry in and present herself for her ration of fruit and chocolate; to which refreshment, indeed, she seemed more than usually inclined. Neither her surprise nor her feelings had taken away her appetite, and she received her director's benediction with a humility respectful, edifying, and filial, as if he had been her grandfather.
"I shall perhaps not visit you at the convent again, my daughter," he had said, revolving in his own mind a thousand schemes, a thousand impossibilities, tinged alike with fierce, bitter disappointment; and to this she had made answer meekly—
"But you will think of me very often, my father; and, oh, remember me, I entreat of you, in your prayers!"
Then Florian knew that the edifice he had taken such pains to rear was crumbling away before his eyes, because, in his anxiety to build it for his own habitation, he had laid its foundations in the sand.
