Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. I, 1866.djvu/172

162 usually characterised it. She laid her little hand on his, which was now transparently thin, and said, "I am getting very wise; I have sold some of the books to make money—the doctor told me where; and I have looked into the shops where they sell caps and bonnets and pretty things, and I can do all that, and get more money to keep us. And when you are well enough to get up, we will go out and be married—shall we not? See! and la petite (the baby had never been named anything else) shall call you Papa—and then we shall never part."

Mr Lyon trembled. This illness—something else, perhaps—had made a great change in Annette. A fortnight after that they were married. The day before, he had ventured to ask her if she felt any difficulty about her religion, and if she would consent to have la petite baptised and brought up as a Protestant. She shook her head and said very simply:—

"No: in France, in other days, I would have minded; but all is changed. I never was fond of religion, but I knew it was right. J'aimais les fieurs, les bals, la musique, et mon mari qui était beau. But all that is gone away. There is nothing of my religion in this country. But the good God