Now, a new, strange life had been born within her,--a life full of passions, contradictions, and conflicts. A love had sprung up in her heart, strange and wonderful, for one who till within these few weeks had been entirely unknown to her, who had never toiled for, or housed, or clothed, or cared for her as her grandmother had, and yet whom a few short interviews, a few looks, a few words, had made to seem nearer and dearer than the old, tried friends of her childhood. In vain she confessed it as a sin,--in vain she strove against it; it came back to her in every hymn, in every prayer. Then she would press the sharp cross to her breast, till a thousand stings of pain would send the blood in momentary rushes to her pale cheek, and cause her delicate lips to contract with an expression of stern endurance, and pray that by any penance and anguish she might secure his salvation. To save one such glorious soul, she said to herself, was work enough for one little life. She was willing to spend it all in endurance, unseen by him, unknown to him, so that at last he should be received into that Paradise which her ardent imagination conceived so vividly. Surely, there she should meet him, radiant as the angel of her dream; and then she would tell him that it was all for his sake that she had refused to listen to him here. And these sinful longings to see him once more, these involuntary reachings of her soul after an earthly companionship, she should find strength to overcome in this pilgrimage. She should go to Rome,--the very city where the blessed Paul poured out his blood for the Lord Jesus,--where Peter fed the flock, till his time, too, came to follow his Lord in the way of the cross. She should even come near to her blessed Redeemer; she should go up, on her knees, those very steps to Pilate's hall where He stood bleeding, crowned with thorns,--His blood, perhaps, dropping on the very stones. Ah, could any mortal love distract her there? Should she not there find her soul made free of every earthly thrall to love her Lord alone,--as she had loved Him in the artless and ignorant days of her childhood,--but better, a thousand times? "Good morning to you, pretty dove!" said a voice from without the garden-wall; and Agnes, roused from her reverie, saw old Jocunda. "I came down to help you off," she said, as she came into the little garden. "Why, my dear little saint! you are looking white as a sheet, and with those tears! What's it all for, baby?" "Ah, Jocunda! grandmamma is angry with me all the time now. I wish I could go once more to the Convent and see my dear Mother Theresa. She is angry, if I but name it; and yet she will not let me do anything here to help her, and so I don't know _what_ to do."