“Yes, dear, all of them, but she’d told me about that, and I didn’t mind so much, though it made one a little bit careful, perhaps, as to what one said. But it wasn’t really so much what I wrote—though that was awkward enough sometimes, between not knowing whether one ought to send one’s love to Reverend Mother, or only ask for her prayers—but what she wrote. She always signed herself ‘Yours affectionately in Christ,’ which used to puzzle me dreadfully. (I was still a Protestant in those days),” said Lady Argent in an explanatory parenthesis. “And I used to wonder so very much whether she expected me to sign myself ‘Yours affectionately in Christ’ back again. It seemed so very unnatural if I did, and yet so very marked if I didn’t, as though my affection for her was quite a worldly sort of thing. And then, dear, she always had a long string of letters after her signature—Mary Serafina, and then ‘Mother’ in brackets and a little cross and P.R.O.S.A., which I used to think for a long time must be Latin, you know—something like ‘Prosit,’ whatever that may mean, only feminine, because it ended with a.”
“And what was it really?” asked Frances, evidently rejecting this plausible hypothesis.
“My dear, I believe it stands for Professed Religious of the Order of St. Anthony. I quite see that it was very stupid of me not to have thought of it at once, but little things like that puzzle one so much at the beginning, and one doesn’t like to ask. That is why I was suggesting,” said Lady Argent, ingeniously finding her way back to her original point of departure, “that it would be a help to you if only you had some Catholic friend to whom you could go—or, if that is quite impossible, to whom you could write.”
“There is always Mrs. Severing,” suggested Frances rather faintly.
Lady Argent looked markedly unenthusiastic, but only remarked in tones of forbearance that Mrs. Severing was not a Catholic.
“I think she will become one, don’t you?” said Frances, but there was no conviction in her voice.
“No doubt it is as it will be, dear,” Lady Argent replied with cryptic charitableness. “But what I had thought of for you, was to put you in touch with the Superior of the Convent at Plymouth. She is a dear friend of mine, and is particularly fond of girls. They have a big school there, I dare say you have heard of it.”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s very well known, dear, because the girls there always distinguish themselves in all the Oxford locals and examinations and things in the most remarkable manner. It is really very curious indeed, when there is such a prejudice against a convent education, but the girls always do better than the high-school girls. The Superior told me so herself.”
“How nice!” cried Frances in perfect sincerity.