Since she had taken the vows, the Lady Lucy had unavoidably been not only less her companion, but moreover the constant practice of religious forms and exercises occupied her mind as well as her time. She was unable to sympathise with Lady Winifred: her lot was cast within her convent walls; and she would have considered it a vain and sinful indulgence to let her thoughts wander towards scenes or pleasures, which she had renounced. At the age of fifteen, therefore, the Lady Winifred's mind had been thrown back upon itself; and it gradually acquired a gentle reserve, a mild thoughtfulness, which suited well the cast of her features. The placid brow, and the full white eyelids,--the rounded cheek, which, except when some sudden emotion called up an evanescent bloom, was pale as the white rose consecrated to the Jacobite party,--were not calculated to strike at first sight; but any one who had once looked upon her, could not choose but look again. The dove-like eyes, the lips so full of expression, the whole form so aristocratic in its mould, so feminine in its movements, so delicate, so fragile,--all were rather like a poet's dream, than a being formed to encounter the chances and changes of this rough work-day world. Her slender throat gleamed white from the close, narrow mantilla of black silk edged with lace, which, according to the fashion of the time and country, was closely fastened down the front; her soft brown hair was smoothly parted off her brow, and tucked under the little white cap, enclosing the back of the head, which is still worn in the Low Countries, and which formed part of the dress of the young pensioners. The character, the countenance, the features, and the habit, all seemed in unison with each other. CHAPTER II. Hail, Childhood! lovely age, in thy short race Too oft we know our only happy hours. With what fond yearnings later we retrace Each several step in thy sweet path of flowers. The spirit bounding wild, unknowing why, And still expectant of new ecstacy-- The little sorrows that to memory seem As 'twere joys undefin'd in some fair dream. _Unpublished Poems._ One evening the Lady Winifred was alone in the small and simple apartment of which she was now the sole inhabitant; the fading light had obliged her to relinquish her employment, and she gazed through the narrow grated window as the sun sank behind the bank of purple clouds which, in low flat countries, so frequently accompany the decline of day. She thought on old Rachael Evans's descriptions of her home, and she remained lost in fanciful imaginings, conjuring the masses of vapour into the forms of mountains which she had never beheld, when she was roused from her meditations by the entrance of the sister porteress, who came to announce to her that a messenger from England had arrived, and to summon her to the parlour grate.