Mother Beatrice decidedly disliked and perhaps feared her. She felt that the girl read her character, mocked her pretensions, and was ever on the watch to thwart her plans. She was in her way decidedly, in more senses than one. She had long hoped, by the influence of Lord Hardwick, either to increase the splendor and power of her present convent, or to be removed to a less secluded one near London; and as she knew him to be very fond of his niece, however anxious he might be for her conversion, she did not dare to use harsh measures toward the willful girl, who was setting a dreadful example to the simple nuns, and did not seem inclined to abandon a single one of her heretical notions. Such a grand conquest, too, as it would be if she could only subdue her! She was very matter-of-fact, and not much given to indulge in day-dreams; nevertheless she had caught herself more than once imagining the time when the noble Lady Katharine Hyde should bow her proud head to receive at her hands the black veil of the order, while Earl Hardwick was in the little parlor signing the deeds of conveyance of the whole estate to the Convent of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows. But Mother Beatrice would have felt even less secure had she known what was going on in her own proper domain. She had not dared to seclude the young girl from all society, but she did not know how well acquainted she had become with all the sisters, and how she was using them for her own purposes. The little plotter was trying, as she had told Geoffrey, to find the weak spot in the citadel, and she believed she had at length discovered it. If the one who guards the gate can be won over to the side of the enemy, there is little hope for the garrison, however strong; and though Lady Katharine could make no impression on deaf old Ursula, who wielded her symbols of office with as much authority as the mother superior herself, yet in the person of the assistant who had been granted her on account of her infirmity, she found an excellent point of attack. The convent porteress was not a nun, for it was her business to attend to all the out-door affairs, and thus keep up that connection between the recluses and the world they had abandoned which was necessary and convenient. It was her duty to purchase stores of provisions and clothing, to attend to the poor who came regularly to the door to receive their dole of charity, and to see that the tenantry of the convent lands paid their dues.