"I expected nothing but the walled up cell, and the 'part in peace,'" continued Denys, "but I did not care; I knew it would be soon over at the worst. But it was not to be. Loveday, do you remember a range of rooms which opened back from the Mother Superior's room—perhaps you never saw them." "Never till the day I left the house." "In one of those rooms I found myself when I recovered my senses, and there I lived for ten years, never seeing a face till my babe was born—my little Loveday. They were kind to me then, and my child lived and seemed like to thrive. But when she was a month old, she drooped and died all in one day like a broken flower. It was as well. Thank Heaven I can now say so. They had given her some of their saints' names, but I called her Loveday after you, child, for I always loved you. She was a sweet little thing, the picture of her father. Oh how empty were my arms and heart for many a long day!" I was weeping too much to speak as that poor mother bent her head and kissed me. "I know not how the time passed after that for a long while. I took no note of it, but at last one morning I waked from a blessed dream of my husband and child in Paradise, and, looking up at the high grated lattice, I saw the sun shining. I had a joint-stool and table, and with their help, I climbed up and looked upon the world once more. The sisters were walking in the orchard, and I could see the very tree where Harry made himself known to me. The fountains of the deep were broken up then, which had been fast sealed in all my trouble. I had not shed a tear before, but now they came in a flood, and with them, some of the bitterness of my grief seemed to pass away, and the cloud lifted from my mind so I could understand and remember. When the mother came with my meals, I made bold to ask her for some work. She seemed pleased—she was always kind in her ways, though she rarely spoke to me—and from that day I had plenty to do." "One day Mother Joanna brought me a heavier basket than usual, and came into the cell instead of passing it through the tour. I rose as she entered, but she bade me sit down again." "'Denys!' said she, after a little silence, 'do you know what is the usual fate of a nun who breaks her convent vows?'" "I bowed, thinking with a kind of dull horror of all I had heard of such things." "'Yours would have been either the closed vault or a lifelong confinement in darkness. We have been lenient to you—perhaps more so than we had any right to be—and now,' she paused." "'Am I to be set at liberty?' I asked." "'Nay, I said not so.'" "An hour before I should have said I did not care enough for life to escape if the door was left open, but now a wild, overmastering desire for liberty took possession of me. I threw myself at the mother's feet and begged her to let me go, were it to beg my bread or serve as household drudge in the meanest farmhouse."