“Oh, maiden, ’twas as strange an hour and as sweet as ever I knew or shall know! Outside was that fair garden, with the last rays of the sun touching the crests of the trees, the palms and cork-trees and acacias, and the fountain vainly leaping up to reach the sunlight, and the birds at their vespers, and the blinding sweets of the posy-beds, and just outside the door a great banana-tree that swayed and rustled in the breeze, and threw its long green leaves like wooing arms in at the door as if to drag me out, wooed me so strangely that if I looked and listened too long I must have yielded and leaped out to its embrace. And inside there was the dusky chapel with the pictures of the saints glimmering from the walls, and the white Christ upon his cross with his eyes downbent to mine, and such a passion of pleading in them as seemed to drag the heart from my breast, and the sisters in their white robes and rosaries, tinkling beads, and the blue cross sewed upon the breast of each fading into the white, and their pure profiles downcast as they listened; and there above us all in the dim obscurity of the place the pulpit, of some black wood, and rising out of it that gaunt gray figure of the friar, his face pale and worn, his eyes ablaze with the fervor of his thought, his emaciated hands upraised, and his air now that of an angel of mercy, now a minister of vengeance and wrath. “Oh, how he preached, that man! How his words poured out like a river in spring and carried all before them like that river in a freshet! Long ere he was done I was on my knees crying my heart out, and bowing myself to God in a life of sanctity and religion,--had he given me the chance, I would have dedicated myself as a novice that very night; and before he was done I had whispered to Inez,-- “‘Take your vows with me to-morrow,’ but she replied,-- “‘Yon comrade of the friar is no monk!’ And looking where she looked I saw close by the door where the Dominican had placed him a man in a friar’s robe and cowl to be sure, but with bold black eyes that gazed like those of a caged bird at all around, resting most often upon Inez and me, who were the only ones who wore not the sisters’ livery, but our own white school frocks and little caps. Somehow the sight of that face and the regard of those bold eyes scattered all my holy mood as the sun scorches up the dew and-- But there, there, I’ll say naught to shock you, pale saint. ’Twas a fair picture, though, was’t not?” “Yes, passing fair,” replied Lora dreamily, “and I were well content to spend my life in such a blessed retreat.” “Your life, maiden! Nay, you have faith in God?” “Why surely, Gillian! Who has not?” And Lora’s clear gray eyes rested in a sort of alarm upon the sombre face of the girl at her feet, who only shook her head, murmuring,-- “And God will care for his own.” CHAPTER XXVIII. A SALT-FISH DINNER.