Agnes did not think so, who rushed in--not to her room, which would have been a little comfort, but to the curtained corner of the dormitory, from which she superintended night and day ‘the middle girls,’ who were her charge, and where she was always afraid of some small pair of peeping eyes prying upon her seclusion. She threw off her bonnet, and flung herself on her knees by the side of her little bed. ‘Oh, what a farce it was,’ she thought, to cover such feelings as surged in her heart under the demure drapery of that black cloak, or to tie the conventual bonnet over cheeks that burned with blushes, called there by such words as she had been hearing! She bent down her face upon the coverlet and cried as if her heart would break, praying for forgiveness, though these same foolish words would run in and out of her prayers, mixing with her heart-broken expressions of penitence in the most bewildering medley. After all, there was no such dreadful harm done. She was not a Sister, nor had she ever intended to be a Sister, but that very simple reflection afforded the fanciful girl no comfort. She had come here to seek a higher life, and lo, at once, at the first temptation, had fallen--fallen, into what? Into the foolishness of the foolishest girl without an ideal--she whose whole soul had longed to lay hold on the ideal, to get into some higher atmosphere, on some loftier level of existence. It was not Sister Mary Jane she was afraid of, it was herself whom she had so offended; for already, could it be possible? insidious traitors in her heart had begun to ply her with suggestions of other kinds of perfection; wicked lines of poetry stole into her head, foolish stories came to her recollection. Oh! even praying, even penitence were not enough to keep out this strife. She sprang to her feet, and rushed to St. Cecilia, the room which was her battleground, and where the noise of the girls putting away their books and work, and preparing to go to tea, promised her exemption, for a little while at least, from any possibility of thought. But Agnes was not to be let off so easily. In the passage she met Sister Mary Jane. ‘I was just going to send for you,’ said the Sister, benign but serious. ‘Come to my room, Agnes. Sister Sarah Ann will take the children to tea.’