"Dear child, canst thou not learn the lessons of God, without going into the cloister?"
"I thought not," said I. "One cannot serve the good God, and remain in the world,—can one?"
"Ah, what is the world?" said Lady Judith. "Walls will not shut it out. Its root is in thine own heart, little one."
"But—your pardon, holy Mother!—you yourself have chosen the cloister."
"Nay, my child. I do not say I might not have done so. But, in fact, it was chosen for me. This veil has been upon my head, Helena, since I was five years old."
"Yet you would not deny, holy Mother, that a nun is better than a wife?"[#]
[#] I trust that I shall not be misunderstood, or supposed to express any approbation of conventual life. At the date of this story, an unmarried woman who was not a nun was a phenomenon never seen, and no woman who preferred single life had any choice but to be a nun. In these early times, also, nuns had more liberty, and monasticism, as well as religion in general, was free from some corruptions introduced in later years. The original nunneries were simply houses where single women could live together in comfort and safety, and were always seminaries of learning and charitable institutions. Most of them were very different places at the date of the dissolution.
"Better? I am not so sure. Happier,—yes, I think so."
"Most people would say just the opposite, would they not?" said I, laughing.
"Most men, and some women," she answered, with a smile. "But Monseigneur Saint Paul thought a woman happier who abode without marriage."