"Mr. Fenton," faltered the nun—"Mr. Fenton, for so I presume you are named?"
"I am Sir Walter Fenton, lady, by the King's grace."
The nun bowed slightly.
"My heart warms, Sir Walter, to that dear native land which I shall never behold again, and in a moment of such weakness I revealed myself to that poor fugitive girl, whom fate so happily threw under my protection, when the confederates were defeated and dispersed——. You know him then, this wicked man, to whom fate in an evil hour gave me as a wife. Oh, Randal! Randal! ————. Let me not recall in bitterness the burning thoughts of years long passed and gone—thoughts which I have long since learned to suppress, or endure with calmness and resignation."
"Enough, dear madam, I am animated by no vulgar curiosity, and time presses. Oh, learn rather to forget your earlier griefs than to remember them. Too well do I know the Lord Clermistonlee, and can easily conceive a long and painful history of domestic woe and suffering. You are the unfortunate Alison Gilford?"
"Of the house of Gilford of that ilk in Lothian," continued the recluse with tearless composure. "In his earlier days, when young, gallant, and winsome, with an honoured name and spotless scutcheon, Randal Clermont became my lover and my husband. Oh, how happy I was for a time; how loving and beloved! But a change came over the unstable heart of my husband. His political intrigues and private excesses soon ruined our fortune, deprived me of his love and him of my esteem. We were driven into exile, and retired to Paris. There he plunged madly into a vortex of the lowest dissipation, and spent the last of my dowry, my jewels, and everything. He became a drunkard, a bully, and a gamester, if not worse. Long, long I endured without a murmur or reproach his pitiless cruelty and cutting contempt, until he eloped with one who in better days had been my companion and attendant, an artful wretch named Beatrix Gilruth. He joined the army of Mareschal Crecquy as a volunteer, and I saw him no more. Hearing afterwards that he was in Scotland fighting under the standard of the Covenant, and being driven to despair by the miseries into which he had plunged me, by leaving me a prey to destitution in a foreign land, I resolved to quit the world for ever; I have come of an old Catholic family, and a convent was my first thought.
"Our child, for we had one, our child was alternately a source of torment and delight," continued the poor nun, weeping bitterly—"my torment from the resemblance it bore to its perfidious father, and my delight as the only tie that bound me to earth; I resolved to see it no more, and sent the poor infant to Scotland in charge of a faithful female servitor, to whom I gave a letter for my husband, purporting to be written on my deathbed, and a ring he had given me in happier days. In an agony of grief I saw the woman depart, and gave her all I possessed, a few louis-d'ors I had acquired at Paris, where I had supported myself as a fleuriste, and was patronized by the Scottish Archers, who were ever very kind to me. I considered myself as dead to the world from that hour, and immediately commenced my noviciate in the licensed convent of St. Ursula in French Flanders.
"Here again all the wounds of my heart were torn open by tidings that the ship in which my loved little boy and his nurse embarked had perished at sea; whether they perished too God alone knoweth, for I heard of them no more. And now the fierce stings of remorse increased the sadness of my sorrow, and I upbraided myself with cruelty, with lack of fortitude and such resignation as became a Christian. I accused myself of infanticide, and in my thoughts by day and my dreams by night I had ever before me the sunny eyes and golden hair of my little child, and its lisping accents in my dreaming ear awoke me to tears and unavailing sorrow."
Here the poor nun again paused and wept bitterly.
"Time never fails to soften the memory of the most acute sorrow, and in the convent to which I had fled for refuge from my own thoughts, the soothing consolations of the sisterhood, the calm, the pious and blameless tenor of their way, charmed me as much as their holy meekness of spirit subdued my bitter regrets. After a time I tasted the sweets of the most perfect contentment, if not of happiness. In the duties of religion, of industry and charity, I soon learned to forget Clermistonlee, or to remember him only in my prayers—to forget that I had been a wife, to forget that I had been—oh, no! not a mother—never could I forget that."