The nun was indeed a most engaging young lady; in personal appearance, in manner, in feeling, realizing the visions of my girlish romance, when reading idle stories in novels on such topics. She had, moreover, all the animated warmth of a genuine Irishwoman, and her fine countenance beaming with benevolent joy at our successful beginning, and with affectionate gratitude for my services, quite won my heart. I promised to repeat the visit shortly, and on doing so accompanied her to walk round the garden, at the other extremity of which stood a building which I took for their school, and unhesitatingly mounted the stairs with my sweet conductor. Judge what was my dismay when, on passing the folding doors, I found myself in a splendid Popish chapel, opposite the altar, over which shone a richly gilt cross, while my poor nun was prostrated in the lowliest adoration, touching the ground with her forehead before the senseless idol. I was confounded, and unable to say any thing; but after a hasty glance at the fine trappings, left the place secretly praying for grace and strength to protest openly against the abomination from which my soul revolted with unspeakable horror from the moment of my witnessing the act of idolatrous homage rendered to a thing of wood and stone. On leaving the convent, I met a person who informed me that my poor nun was a Protestant lady of high respectability, sprung from one of those iniquitous mixed marriages, her mother belonging to the established church, her father a Romanist, who, however, honestly adhered to the terms of the wicked covenant by which the sons were to be educated in his, the daughters in her persuasion. A family of daughters were born to them, who, with their mother, continued nominally Protestant; but after his death, when the house was filled with Romish priests, performing for a week together their mummeries over the corpse, these poor females had become a prey to the subtle perversions of the ecclesiastics, and had openly apostatized, all save my new friend, who with a better informed mind and more scriptural knowledge withstood their sophistries, until sundry mock miracles performed by means of saintly relics and a well-contrived nocturnal visitation from the ghost of her father whom she fondly loved, had so unnerved and frightened her that she too fell a prey to the delusion. They ended by admitting her into the sisterhood of this convent, excusing the payment of the large sum usually demanded; and as her darkness was now great in proportion to the measure of light against which she had sinned, they found her a valuable decoy-bird to draw others into the snare. I did not learn all these particulars at the time, nor until after her decease, when I met with a near family connection of hers who told them to me. I simply gleaned the fact of her apostasy, with that of her abounding zeal in the antichristian cause.