"Oh, Aunt Adelaide!" said the little girl mournfully, "pray for me, that I may be enabled to wait patiently until that time shall come, and never permitted to indulge rebellious feelings towards papa."
Adelaide kissed her softly. "Poor child!" she whispered, "it is a hard trial; but try, dearest, to remember who sends it."
She was silent a moment; then said, reluctantly, "Elsie, your papa has entrusted me with a message to you, which I was to deliver after your visit to the Oaks, unless you had then come to the resolution to comply with his wishes, or rather, his commands."
She paused, and Elsie, trembling, and almost holding her breath, asked fearfully, "What is it, Aunt Adelaide?"
"Poor darling!" murmured Adelaide, clasping the little form more closely, and pressing her lips to the fair brow; "I wish I could save you from it. He says that if you continue obdurate, he has quite determined to send you to a convent to be educated."
As Adelaide made this announcement, she pitied the child from the bottom of her heart; for she knew that much of Elsie's reading had been on the subject of Popery and Papal institutions; that she had pored over histories of the terrible tortures of the Inquisition and stories of martyrs and captive nuns, until she had imbibed an intense horror and dread of everything connected with that form of error and superstition. Yet, knowing all this, Adelaide was hardly prepared for the effect of her communication.
"Oh, Aunt Adelaide!" almost shrieked the little girl, throwing her arms around her aunt's neck, and clinging to her, as if in mortal terror, "Save me! save me! Oh! tell papa I would rather he would kill me at once, than send me to such a place."
And she wept and sobbed, and wrung her hands in such grief and terror, that Adelaide grew absolutely frightened.
"They will not dare to hurt you, Elsie," she hastened to say.
"Oh, they will! they will!—they will try to make me go to mass, and pray to the Virgin, and bow to the crucifixes; and when I refuse, they will put me in a dungeon and torture me."