Volume Three—Chapter Twenty One.
A Quick Conversion.
“When is this horror to have an end? Only with my life? Am I, indeed, to pass the remainder of my days within this dismal cell? Days so happy, till that the happiest of all—its ill-starred night! And my love so strong, so confident—its reward seeming so nigh—all to be for nought—sweet dreams and bright hopes suddenly, cruelly extinguished! Nothing but darkness now; within my heart, in this gloomy place, everywhere around me! Oh, it is agony! When will it be over?”
It is the English girl who thus bemoans her fate—still confined in the convent, and the same cloister. Herself changed, however. Though but a few weeks have passed, the roses of her cheeks have become lilies, her lips wan, her features of sharper outline, the eyes retired in their sockets, with a look of woe unspeakable. Her form, too, has fallen away from the full ripe rounding that characterised it, though the wreck is concealed by a loose drapery of ample folds. For Soeur Marie now wears the garb of the Holy Sisterhood—hating it, as her words show.
She is seated on the pallet’s edge while giving utterance to her sombre soliloquy; and without change of attitude continues it:—
“Imprisoned I am—that certain! And for no crime. It may be without hostility on the part of those who have done it. Perhaps, better it were so? Then there might be hope of my captivity coming to an end. As it is, there is none—none! I comprehend all now—the reason for bringing me here—keeping me—everything. And that reason remains—must, as long as I am alive! Merciful heaven!”
The exclamatory phrase is almost a shriek; despair sweeping through her soul, as she thinks of why she is there shut up. For hingeing upon that is the hopelessness, almost a dead, drear certainty, she will never have deliverance!
Stunned by the terrible reflection, she pauses—even thought for the time stayed. But the throe passing, she again pursues her soliloquy, now in more conjectural strain:—