it, dad, Miss Gwilt seems to have felt
for him too. She took a serious turn; and was 'converted' (as they call
it) by the lady who had charge of her in the interval before she went to
Brussels. The priest at the Belgium school appears to have been a man
of some discretion, and to have seen that the girl's sensibilities were
getting into a dangerously excited state. Before he could quiet her
down, he fell ill, and was succeeded by another priest, who was a
fanatic. You will understand the sort of interest he took in the girl,
and the way in which he worked on her feelings, when I tell you that she
announced it as her decision, after having been nearly two years at the
school, to end her days in a convent! You may well stare! Miss Gwilt, in
the character of a Nun, is the sort of female phenomenon you don't often
set eyes on."

"Did she go into the convent?" asked Mr. Bashwood. "Did they let her go
in, so friendless and so young, with nobody to advise her for the best?"

"The Blanchards were consulted, as a matter of form," pursued Bashwood
the younger. "_They_ had no objection to her shutting herself up in a
convent, as you may well imagine. The pleasantest letter they ever had
from her, I'll answer for it, was the letter in which she solemnly took
leave of them in this world forever. The people at the convent were as
careful as usual not to commit themselves. Their rules wouldn't allow
her to take the veil till she had tried the life for a year first, and
then, if she had any doubt, for another year after that. She tried the
life for the first year, accordingly, and doubted. She tried it for the
second year, and was wise enough, by that time, to give it up without
further hesitation. Her position was rather an awkward one when she
found herself at liberty again. The sisters at the convent had lost
their interest in her; the mistress at the school declined to take her
back as teacher, on the ground that she was too nice-looking for the
place; the priest considered her to be possessed by the devil. There
was nothing for it but to write to the Blanchards again, and ask them to
start her in life as a teacher of music on her own account. She wrote
to her former mistress accordingly. Her former mistress had evidently
doubted the genuineness of the girl's resolution to be a nun, and had
seized the opportunity offered by her entry into the convent to cut off
all further communication between her ex-waiting-maid and herself. Miss