I was then living in Paris, and Mary was placed under my mother's wing. We went to see her on the _Jours de Parloir_, and she came to us on the _Jours de Sortie_. But it did not last long. As might have been expected, the sudden change from a life of excitement and constant out-door exercise to one of seclusion and sedentary habits proved too trying to her health, and after a few months the medical man of the convent declared that he was not prepared to accept the responsibility of taking charge of her, and strongly advised that she should be sent home. We communicated this intelligence to her father, begging at the same time that before he came to remove her she might be allowed to spend a month with us. The request was granted and Mary came to stay with us. That we might lose as little as possible of each other's company while we were together, she shared my room. We spent the mornings at home; I studying or taking my lessons, she reading, or lolling about the room, watching the clock, and longing for the master to go and set me free, that we might go out. My mother, who only in a lesser degree shared my affection for Mary, and was anxious to make her visit as pleasant as possible, took her about to all the places best worth seeing in the city--the picture-galleries, the palaces, the museums, and the churches. The latter, though many of them, even as works of art, were amongst the most interesting monuments for a stranger, Mary seemed thoroughly indifferent to. When we entered one, instead of kneeling a moment before the sanctuary, as any Catholic does from mere force of habit and impulse, she would just make the necessary genuflexion, and, without waiting for us, hurry on round the building, examine the pictures and the stained glass, and then go out with as little delay as might be. This did not strike my mother, who was apt to remain all the time at her prayers, while I walked about doing the honors of the church to Mary; but it struck me, and it pained and puzzled me. She was too innately honest to attempt the shadow of prevarication or _pose_ even in her attitude, and her haste in despatching the inspection of every church we entered was so undisguised that I saw she did not care whether I noticed it or not. Once, on coming out of the little church of St. Genevieve, one of the loveliest shrines ever raised to the worship of God by the genius of man, I said rather sharply to her, for she had beaten a more precipitate retreat than usual, and cut short my mother's devotions at the tomb of the saint: "Mary," I said, "one really would think the devil was at your heels the moment you enter a church, you are in such a violent hurry to get out of it." She laughed, not mockingly, with a sort of half-ashamed expression, and turning her pure, full eyes on me.