The Superioress, who reserved to herself the supervision of all the French classes, was a fine vigorous old woman, the daughter of a Legitimist who had been among the leaders of the Duchesse de Berri's abortive rising. As was natural, she held and taught very strong views concerning the state, past and present, of her beloved native country. To her everything which had taken place in France before the Revolution had been more or less well done, while all that had followed it was evil and reprobate. Without going so far as to show Louis XIV. 'étudiant les plans du General La Vallière et du Colonel Montespan,' she completely hid from her pupils the ugly side of the old régime, and exhibited the Sun King as among the most glorious descendants of St. Louis. To her the romance of French history was all woven in and about Versailles, the town where she had herself spent her girlhood, and on the steps of whose palace her own uncle had fallen in defending the apartments of Marie Antoinette on the historic 5th of October. The many heroic episodes of the revolution and of the Vendean wars were as familiar to this old nun, who had spent more than half her long life in England, as if she had herself taken part in them, and she delighted in stirring her own and her pupils' blood by their recital. So Cecily's heroes and heroines all wore doublet and hose, or hoops, patches, and powder. Most of them spoke French, though in the spacious chambers of her imagination there was room left for Charles I., his Cavaliers, and their valiant wives and daughters. Equally real to the girl were the saints and martyrs with whose histories she was naturally as familiar, and it was characteristic of her sunny and kindly nature that she early adopted as her patroness and object of special veneration that child-martyr whose very name is unknown, and to whom was accordingly given by the Fathers that of Theophila--the friend of God. Cecily, knowing very well what it was to be without those ties with which most little girls are blessed, thought it probable that even in heaven St. Theophila must sometimes feel a little lonely, especially when she compared herself with such popular saints--from the human point of view--as St. Theresa, St. Catherine, St. Anthony, and St. Francis.