“I should like to tear up and down this road as hard as ever I could, throwing my arms over my head and screaming aloud!” The ladies exchanged glances of astonishment, but Margaret Pullen could not forbear smiling as she asked their new acquaintance the reason why. “O! because I am free--free at last, after ten long years of imprisonment! I am telling you the truth, I am indeed, and you would feel just the same if you had been shut up in a horrid Convent ever since you were eleven years old!” At the word “convent”, the national Protestant horror immediately spread itself over the faces of the three other ladies; Mrs. Montague gathered her flock about her and took them out of the way of possible contamination, though she would have much preferred to hear the rest of Miss Brandt’s story, and Elinor Leyton moved her chair further away. But Margaret Pullen was interested and encouraged the girl to proceed. “In a convent! I suppose then you are a Roman Catholic!” Harriet Brandt suddenly opened her slumbrous eyes. “I don’t think so! I’m not quite sure what I am! Of course I’ve had any amount of religion crammed down my throat in the Convent, and I had to follow their prayers, whilst there, but I don’t believe my parents were Catholics! But it does not signify, I am my own mistress now. I can be what I like!” “You have been so unfortunate then as to lose your parents!” “O! yes! years ago, that is why my guardian, Mr. Trawler, placed me in the Convent for my education. And I’ve been there for ten years! Is it not a shame? I’m twenty-one now! That’s why I’m free! You see,” the girl went on confidentially, “my parents left me everything, and as soon as I came of age I entered into possession of it. My guardian, Mr. Trawler, who lives in Jamaica,--did I tell you that I’ve come from Jamaica?--thought I should live with him and his wife, when I left the Convent, and pay them for my keep, but I refused. They had kept me too tight! I wanted to see the world and life--it was what I had been looking forward to--so as soon as my affairs were settled, I left the West Indies and came over here!” “They said you came from England in the Hotel!” “So I did! The steamer came to London and I stayed there a week before I came on here!” “But you are too young to travel about by yourself, Miss Brandt! English young ladies never do so!” said Mrs. Pullen.