repeated Mary slowly; "and yet, there are other lives that I had rather take for my model than any of these." {116} "Yes, I know, Mary. You would take rather the life of some saint, St. Elizabeth herself, perhaps; you are always so good and gentle; and Sister Agnes used to say that she knew you would come back to her some time as a sister yourself. But I am not at all so; I love the world, and society, and amusement, and am only dissatisfied because I am neither so brilliant nor beautiful as I should like to be. I feel that your ideal is the better one, but I have not strength of character enough to live anything but a gay, butterfly life. You know my favorite song is, 'I'd be a butterfly,' and indeed I do wish for beauty more than anything else in the world. And yet, after all, that face that I saw under the plain black bonnet was of a heavenly beauty that I cannot forget. Page's copy of the _Madonna della Seggiola_ that we admired so much yesterday is scarcely more beautiful." "And her life has been as beautiful as her face, they say. But there is our stage. Let us hurry a little; mother will be waiting dinner for us already." A low rap at Mrs. Kenton's door. It is the hour after dinner, and Dr. Kenton and Mr. Hartridge are in the library, alternately discussing business and their meerschaums. There are two hours yet before the ladies need dress for the evening. Mrs. Kenton is sitting in her large chair before the grate, and the girls come in quietly and draw up two low ottomans at her feet. The gas is not yet lighted, and the twilight throws long, deep shadows from the curtains and the quaint, old-fashioned high bedposts. "Mother, we have seen Sister Simplicia to-day. Anita very much wishes to hear her history, and you have never told it to me yet. It is just the night to tell a story, just such a night as we read of, 'without, the snow falling thick and fast, but within a bright fire throwing its cheerful light around the room and lighting up the countenance of the narrator,'" said Mary, smiling. "I imagine the fire you are quoting about was of hickory logs in a great, wide fireplace; and this is only a city grate," said her mother in the same tone; and then more seriously, "but I will tell you the story, since you wish it, and all the more readily as I was thinking of her at the moment you entered.