t frugality. She determined to regulate her expenses in
accordance with this small sum. Potatoes, rice, and beans, with a
little salt, and occasionally the luxury of a little butter, were her
only food. She allowed herself to leave the convent but twice a week:
once, to call, for an hour, upon a relative, and once to visit her
father, and look over his linen. She had a little room under the roof,
in the attic, where the pattering of the rain upon the tiles soothed
to pensive thought, and lulled her to sleep by night. She carefully
secluded herself from association with the other inmates of the
convent, receiving only a visit of an hour each evening from the
much-loved Sister Agatha. Her time she devoted, with unremitting
diligence, to those literary avocations in which she found so much
delight. The quiet and seclusion of this life had many charms for
Jane. Indeed, a person with such resources for enjoyment within
herself could never be very weary. The votaries of fashion and gayety
are they to whom existence grows languid and life a burden. Several
months thus glided away in tranquillity. She occasionally walked in
the garden, at hours when no one else was there. The spirit of
resignation, which she had so long cultivated; the peaceful
conscience she enjoyed, in view of duty performed; the elevation of
spirit, which enabled her to rise superior to misfortune; the
methodical arrangement of time, which assigned to each hour its
appropriate duty; the habit of close application, which riveted her
attention to her studies; the highly-cultivated taste and
buoyantly-winged imagination, which opened before her all the fairy
realms of fancy, were treasures which gilded her cell and enriched her
heart. She passed, it is true, some melancholy hours; but even that
melancholy had its charms, and was more rich in enjoyment than the
most mirthful moments through which the unreflecting flutter. M.
Roland continued a very constant and kind correspondence with Jane,
but she was not a little wounded by the philosophic resignation with
which he submitted to her father's stern refusal. In the course of
five or six months he again visited Paris, and called at the convent
to see Jane. He saw her pale and pensive face behind a grating, and
the sight of one who had suffered so much from her faithful love for
him, and the sound of her voice, which ever possessed a peculiar
charm, revived in his mind those impressions which had been somewhat
fad