Although she had no wish to wander beyond the walls of the little convent garden, though she seldom even went to the parlour grate, and never wished to avail herself of the occasional opportunities which occurred to the pensioners of mixing in society, still she felt an instinctive horror of irrevocable vows, to renounce--they knew not what. It was with a feeling amounting to despair that she witnessed the funeral rites, that she heard the service for the dead, that she saw the black veil dropped between her sister and the world, of whose pains and pleasures they could form no idea. Moreover, these vows for ever precluded the possibility of her seeing their native country in company with that beloved sister; and in the heart of the Lady Winifred there existed the strong instinctive affection for the land of her forefathers, which the coldest and the most hardened are not wholly without, but which in minds of a more ardent temperament amounts almost to a ruling passion. She had never beheld the British shores, she had never breathed British air, and yet she felt as if England was her home--her natural resting-place. When first the young girls had been sent to Bruges, an old and faithful servant of the name of Evans had accompanied them. She was a native of Wales, and had been born in the neighbourhood of the ancient seat of the Herbert family, Poole Castle, in Montgomeryshire. Loyalty to the family of Herbert had grown with her growth and strengthened with her strength, and was only balanced by the attachment to her country, which is generally more enthusiastic in the inhabitants of mountainous districts than of any other. The young girl had listened for hours together to old Evans's glowing descriptions of the cloud-capped Snowdon, the green mountains, the smiling valleys, the rapid streams, the wreaths of mist,--all the varied beauties of her own Wales. From the windows of their convent they could descry nothing but the flat and uninteresting country which surrounds Bruges: but when the clouds formed themselves into a thousand fantastic shapes, old Evans would point out to them how one mass resembled such a mountain near their ancestral castle--how another was the very picture of Snowdon when he wore his white cap of clouds, as she familiarly expressed herself. She would describe to them the peculiar customs of Wales--the snowy caps, the small black hats, of the women,--would expatiate on the light form and airy step with which they trod the mountain paths--would picture to them how beautiful were the white sheep dotting the soft green of the steep and swelling hills, till the youthful Lady Winifred's heart would burn within her to flee to the home of her ancestors. Nor, though Evans afterwards returned to her mistress, the duchess, when she established herself in England, did these impressions fade away.