She wrote, in accordance with Father Pope’s advice, to the Superioress of the sisterhood to which my mother had belonged. I confess, for all my confidence, I awaited the answer in some trepidation. It fulfilled, however, when it came, my best expectations. The charitable Mother confirmed the story of her former postulant’s recreancy and flight with a profligate man of fashion--whither, she had never concerned herself to inquire. The woman, in leaving the convent gates, she said, had died to her--to all, save the lord of hell, who, she was rejoiced now to hear, had so soon claimed and secured his own. She would command a Magnificat that night in praise of the eternal chastity; and there her interest in the matter ended. She wrote in French, with much Pharisaic unction, which betrayed, nevertheless, its underlying gall. Madam quoted to me only so much (I found an opportunity later to read the whole) as appeared to justify her in the course upon which she was resolved--my present adoption, that was to say, by her, for the sake of my soul. I was becomingly meek and grateful in placing myself unreservedly in her hands; and in this manner began my self-obliterating martyrdom of five long years in the placid nunnery of Wellcot. For a time I was very happy, until a ripening intelligence revealed to me by degrees the limitations of my moral and material surroundings. I have no intention to detail the processes of that growth. I can hardly, indeed, claim an independent life until detached from its dull experiences. It is enough here briefly to review them. My first warning disillusionment was the knowledge, to my infinite disgust, that Father Pope was to remain a permanency in the asylum to which accident had translated him. Whether his former patrons seized this opportunity--in the first reactionary days after riot--to rid themselves of an ungainly incubus, or whether--which is more probable--he himself manœuvred for transference to new hunting-grounds, not of souls, but grubs, I do not know. Anyhow, his baggage being his book, the change was easy, and at Wellcot he remained, titular chaplain to the Lady Sophia, but positive to a community of nuns across the valley, who were her most cherished protégées, and to whose ranks I, in the first blind fervour of my redemption, unprovisionally dedicated myself. I had not been long settled before, speculating on the relationship between Shole and Wellcot-Herring, I began to wonder if I was destined ever to see again the young gentleman who had so insulted me. Perhaps, I thought, I might help by my example, and even persuasion, to wean him from his evil courses. However, the opportunity was not to be given me, as it appeared he was not sufficiently in love with his aunt’s ways to pay her even the periodic courtesy of a visit. But his father the earl came occasionally, and from him I was bent upon discovering whether or not my image was entirely effaced from the son’s remembrance.