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This is what the Mother-Superior wrote to her kinswoman, with her mobile, eloquent lips folded closely together as she thought, and her grave eyes following the swift journey of the pen as it formed the sentences:
"Now let me speak to you of Lynette Mildare. I have never thought it necessary to make the slightest disguise of my great partiality for this, the dearest of all the many children given me by Our Lord since I resigned my crown of earthly motherhood to Him."
She stopped, remembering what another great lady, also a relative of hers, had remarked when it was first made public that she intended to enter the Novitiate:
"Indeed! It would seem, then, that you are devoid of ambition, my dear, unlike the other people of your house."
She had said, paraphrasing a retort previously made:
"Does it strike you as lack of ambition that one of our family should prefer Christ before any earthly spouse?"
What a base utterance that had seemed to her afterwards! How devoid of the true spirit of the religious, how hateful, petty, profane! But the great lady had been greatly struck by it, and had gone about quoting the words everywhere. She, who had spoken them, repented them with tears, and set the memory of them between her and ill-considered, worldly speech, for ever.
She wrote on now:
"She has no vocation for the life of a religious. I doubt her being happy or successful as a teacher here, were I removed from my post by supreme earthly authority, or by death, either contingency being the expression of the Will of God. She has a reserved, sensitive nature, quick to feel, and eager to hide what she feels, indifferent to praise or popularity among the many, anxiously desirous to please, passionately devoted where she gives her love...."