They crossed by the night mail to Boulogne, and thence without delay continued the route to Le Puy. A wearisome journey, and which, to Amy, seemed endless, so long and dreary seemed the hours which kept her apart from her idolised mother. At length it was accomplished, and at the time that the whole country round Harleyford had risen to join in the fruitless search, and Frank Varley and Lord Hardcastle had clasped hands in a solemn vow to rest not day nor night till the wanderer was brought home, Amy was lying in her mother’s arms at the Convent of St. Geneviève, or kneeling by her side kissing her hands, feet, or dress, in a perfect ecstasy and bewilderment of joy that her wildest imaginings were at last realized, and that she had found a mother indeed. “Ah,” said Amy, here breaking off her narrative and drawing a long breath. “No one could have painted my mother to me as she really was and as I found her. It would have needed a special inspiration to have done so. To describe material beauty, the beauty of form, colour, and outline—yes, it can be done; but to paint the many transparent tints of a sunbeam, or the light and shadow of a handful of the sparkling, rippling stream! It is impossible. When one can be found to do this then may he begin to paint my mother in all her changeful, wondrous beauty. As a very empress, as a star in a dark sky she shone out among the little brown nuns at St. Geneviève. They were all so little, so brown, so old, not a young face among them. Not one of them had been the other side of the mountains for more than thirty years. They were all most kind and courteous, and so indulgent to my mother in all her caprices, treating her almost as a wayward, spoilt child, and only insisting on such matters as were absolutely necessary to keep up the discipline of the convent. In her tiny bare little room, in her coarse brown-grey dress, my mother had passed ten of the best years of her life. It is marvellous to me, knowing her as I now do, that the routine and confinement of a convent life had not broken her spirit and quite worn her out. Oh, papa, I hate routine, I hate discipline, I detest a quiet, orderly life, and yet I feel as if, should I live to be withered, and brown, and old, I should like to come here to these kind little nuns and end my days in peace with them.” Amy sighed wearily; she often sighed now. The strange events through which she had lately passed had tried her beyond measure, but the bitterest trial of all had been the choice she had been compelled to make between her father and her mother. To believe in the truth of the one was to acknowledge the falsehood of the other, and it was hard indeed for her young, loving heart to choose between the two.