She never succeeded, however, in inducing Mary to commit herself during the four years that she was under her charge. It was war to the end; not to the bitter end, for the strife did not weaken, nay, it probably strengthened the enduring attachment that had sprung up between them. By way of sealing irrevocably and publicly this attachment on her side, Mary added the nun's name to her own, and even after she left school she continued to sign herself Mary Benedicta. When the time came round for frequenting the sacraments, it was the sure signal for a quarrel between the two belligerents. There was no plea or stratagem that Mary would not have recourse to in order to avoid going to confession. Yet withal she had a reputation in the school for piety--a queer, impulsive sort of piety peculiar to herself, that came by fits and starts. We had an unaccountable belief in the efficacy of her prayers, and in any difficulty she was one of those habitually appealed to to pray us out of it; not, indeed, that we were actuated by any precise view as to the spiritual quality of the prayers, only impressed vaguely by her general character, that whatever she did she put her heart in and did thoroughly. Mother Benedicta used to say that her devotion to the Blessed Sacrament would save her. But this devotion consisted, as far as we could see, in an enthusiastic love for Benediction; and as Mary was passionately fond of music, and confessed a weakness for effective ceremonial, Mother Benedicta herself occasionally had misgivings as to how much of the devotion went to the object of the ceremony and how much to its accessories, the lights, the music, and the incense. At any rate, once over, it exercised no apparent control over her life. The rules of the school she systematically ignored; the rule of silence she looked upon with special contempt as a bondage fit for fools, but unworthy of rational human beings. To the last day of her sojourn in the school, she practically illustrated the opinion that speech was of gold and silence of brass, and left it with the reputation of being the most indefatigable talker; the most unruly and untidy subject, but the sweetest nature that ever tried the patience and won the hearts of the community. When she was about eighteen, her father sent her to the Sacré Cœur, in Paris, to complete her education, which, in spite of considerable expense on his part, and masters without end, was at this advanced period in a sadly retrograde state, the little she had learned at school in Ireland having been assiduously forgotten in the course of a year's anarchical holiday, when reading of every sort and even her favorite music were set aside for the more congenial pastimes of dancing, and skating, and flying across country after the hounds.