“It is a nice name,” she said. “Did _your_ mother too die in the convent? I am very happy here, but I shall be happier if you come.” Lady Sophia had entered softly while she spoke. “Hush, Patty!” said she, with a smile. “And run away now.” The child went, looking wistfully back. _Ah, mignonnette, ma petite à jamais mémorable, toi que j’aime sans discontinuer!_ How wert thou to me from the first the most attached of little dogs! Madam drew me into a window, and looked earnestly into my eyes. As she held me, Father Pope entered and stood near, my morose and baleful inquisitor. “Do you like my home?” she said, in her level, toneless voice. The labour of lifting it seemed always constitutionally beyond her. I clasped my hands. “O, madam,” I said, “I could be a very good Catholic here!” She smiled, in a surprised way, then looked grave. I waited in a fever of expectation for her to speak again. I had already decided that I would wish to be adopted like Patience, in whom I seemed to foresee a little adoring vassal, so welcome after my own long slavery, and that I must be adroit to gain my point. Brighthelmston, with its questionable potentialities, had darkened in contrast with this paradise. I felt even that it would not be good for me to return there; that I was destined for a virtuous, if not a devout life. It is no contradiction that I had not thought so an hour before. Our moral development is intermittent. Its phases of growth are inspirations of adaptation to circumstance. A fever made of Francis of Assisi a saint out of a profligate. These high lawns had revealed to me the pit from which I had escaped. Lady Sophia looked very sweet and grave. “Or anywhere, I hope,” she said. “Faith is not a question of surroundings.” I was not so sure of that; but I held my tongue, hanging my head. “Let me see your face,” she insisted, and put her thin hand under my chin. “It is a pretty and an innocent one,” she declared. “How came you, child, in the position in which Father Pope found you?” I told her how I had been stolen by the sweep, and had escaped from him rather than seem to concur in the violence offered to my religion. “It was an ingenious and a courageous act,” she said, gently kindling; “was it not, Father?” The bear snorted, dissent or commendation--it was all one. “Ask her about her mother,” he growled. “True,” said the lady, with a gesture of involuntary repulsion, for which she the moment after atoned with a caress. “She had been a Sister in the Hospital of St. Magdalen, Father Pope tells me,” she said very low. “She had returned there to expiate her--her”-- “No,” I broke in. “You told me so,” roared the priest. “I didn’t,” I said, half crying. “You were looking at your book all the time I confessed.” Madame Sophia could not restrain a smile. “Fie, Father!” she said. “I admit it does not sound the least probable part of the child’s experiences.” But she sobered again in a moment.