“And if I do, would you like to make your home here in the meantime, Diana?”
The strain had been very severe. I fell on my knees before her, weeping. I knew, from what my governess had once told me, that les Madelonnettes must confirm the worst of my story.
“O, madam,” I cried, “if you would train me in goodness and piety!”
She kissed me, then looked up, her immobile face quite transfigured.
“Perhaps,” she thrilled, “some day, perhaps some day to fill the place and vindicate the vows of the poor weak apostate who gave you life!”
“Write to the Magdalens,” growled Father Pope.
VII.
I AM PUT AWAY IN CAMPHOR
I cannot hold Lady Sophia altogether irresponsible for the loss to the Calendar of a very promising saint. I entered Wellcot enthusiastic to devote the rest of my days to the practices of piety and self-renunciation, and I was moved to this resolve not least by the example my benefactress seemed to offer me of the most perfect detachment from the world. Alas! I was too soon to realise how the chaste aloofness of a mind may mean only a vanity so sensitive, and an irritability so nervous, as for ever to be on their defence against unwarranted approaches. I had thought her serenely above the littlenesses of life; and all the time she only sat on a level with them, but apart, in alarm lest her moral distinction should be held to justify familiarities with her social. The folded wings of piety may be used to conceal some uncelestial humours. I had supposed, at least, that passion was the remotest from her temperament; and there even I was wrong, as you shall learn.
She wrote, in accordance with Father Pope’s advice, to the Superioress of the sisterhood to which my mother had belonged. I confess, for all my confidence, I awaited the answer in some trepidation. It fulfilled, however, when it came, my best expectations. The charitable Mother confirmed the story of her former postulant’s recreancy and flight with a profligate man of fashion—whither, she had never concerned herself to inquire. The woman, in leaving the convent gates, she said, had died to her—to all, save the lord of hell, who, she was rejoiced now to hear, had so soon claimed and secured his own. She would command a Magnificat that night in praise of the eternal chastity; and there her interest in the matter ended. She wrote in French, with much Pharisaic unction, which betrayed, nevertheless, its underlying gall. Madam quoted to me only so much (I found an opportunity later to read the whole) as appeared to justify her in the course upon which she was resolved—my present adoption, that was to say, by her, for the sake of my soul. I was becomingly meek and grateful in placing myself unreservedly in her hands; and in this manner began my self-obliterating martyrdom of five long years in the placid nunnery of Wellcot.
For a time I was very happy, until a ripening intelligence revealed to me by degrees the limitations of my moral and material surroundings. I have no intention to detail the processes of that growth. I can hardly, indeed, claim an independent life until detached from its dull experiences. It is enough here briefly to review them.