The house, as she had already been informed, was called Mount Eden, and it formed the centre of a small estate, consisting of woods, arable and grazing fields, farm buildings, and outlying cottages. Originally an old country manor, it had about ten years before come into the market, and had been purchased by the lady named Sister Ursula (partly out of a large inheritance of her own, and partly by means of voluntary subscription) for the purpose of founding in it a home for penitent and fallen women. The scheme on which the establishment was based was unusually wide and broad in its provisions. In the first place there were no religious barriers, and in the second place there was no attempt made to imitate the severe ethics of the penitentiary. The place was, in the truest sense, a Home. All the inmates, if in good health, were required to work in some way--generally in the way to which they had been best accustomed; some performing the higher or lower household duties; others working in the laundry; others, again, doing dairy and field work on the home farm--all in fact being occupied pleasantly and profitably, with a goodly share of interest in the result of their own labours. No attempt was made at any irritating supervision of the morals of the inmates; once admitted it was taken for granted that they were tired of evil doing, at any rate for the time being, and that it was unnecessary to preach to them, six days out of seven, on the wickedness of their ways. At the same time they were daily brought into contact with sound, sweet, and beautiful associations. A special feature of the establishment, copied from some of the Magdalen institutions in France, was the reception--particularly in the summer season--of sick and delicate children, many of them babes in arms, from the neighbouring city. These children were distributed among the poor sisters, and it was wonderful to see with what eagerness they were received, with what tenderness they were guarded, by these kind foster-mothers. Many a helplessly degraded woman, on whom all their holy influences had been unavailing, was saved and consecrated by the necessity of tending a child; many an evil creature felt for the first time, with tiny arms clinging round her neck, the instincts of a pure maternity and the inspiration of a heavenly hope. Another rule, to which indeed the foregoing was a pendant, gave to an inmate, if a mother, the privilege of bringing her own offspring with her, and of rearing it in the house. No attempt was made to separate mother and child. No penitentiary laws were in existence, based upon the assumption that the former was an alien, and the latter a ‘child of sin.’