So he wrote earnestly and peremptorily to his pupil, urging her, with all his subtle and refined eloquence, to make a final appeal to her mother, and if that failed, to act 'as her conscience should direct her;' and enclosed an answer from the superior of the convent, to a letter which Argemone had in a mad moment asked him to write. The superior's letter spoke of Argemone's joining her as a settled matter, and of her room as ready for her, while it lauded to the skies the peaceful activity and usefulness of the establishment. This letter troubled Argemone exceedingly. She had never before been compelled to face her own feelings, either about the nunnery or about Lancelot. She had taken up the fancy of becoming a Sister of Charity, not as Honoria might have done, from genuine love of the poor, but from 'a sense of duty.' Almsgiving and visiting the sick were one of the methods of earning heaven prescribed by her new creed. She was ashamed of her own laziness by the side of Honoria's simple benevolence; and, sad though it may be to have to say it, she longed to outdo her by some signal act of self-sacrifice. She had looked to this nunnery, too, as an escape, once and for all, from her own luxury, just as people who have not strength to be temperate take refuge in teetotalism; and the thought of menial services towards the poor, however distasteful to her, came in quite prettily to fill up the little ideal of a life of romantic asceticisms and mystic contemplation, which gave the true charm in her eyes to her wild project. But now--just as a field had opened to her cravings after poetry and art, wider and richer than she had ever imagined-- just as those simple childlike views of man and nature, which she had learnt to despise, were assuming an awful holiness in her eyes-- just as she had found a human soul to whose regeneration she could devote all her energies,--to be required to give all up, perhaps for ever (and she felt that if at all, it ought to be for ever);--it was too much for her little heart to bear; and she cried bitterly; and tried to pray, and could not; and longed for a strong and tender bosom on which to lay her head, and pour out all her doubts and struggles; and there was none. Her mother did not understand-- hardly loved her. Honoria loved her; but understood her even less than her mother. Pride--the pride of intellect, the pride of self- will--had long since sealed her lips to her own family. . . .