ssession of me, and, stooping
down, I picked up her infirmary shoes. On examination I discovered in
them pieces of broken glass; a thrill akin to horror ran through my
whole frame. I held the shoes in my hands and looked at the pale,
suffering face of Adeline as she lay there on her bed, and this
evening the whole scene rises before me--the little infirmary with
its clean, white floor, a few cheap prints of the stations of the
cross hanging on the otherwise bare walls, the two or three small
iron bedsteads, then the white wooden altar upon which was spread a
white linen cloth embroidered with red; the two statues, one of 'Our
Lady of Dolours' and the second of St. Joseph, the patron of happy
deaths. In the center of the altar was a vase with a few cheap paper
flowers.

"Yes, it comes to me most vividly. There she lay, the sin of her
past life being that she, too, had been deceived at the altars of
Rome--a victim of priestly solicitation in the confessional. Even as
she lay there in the last stages of consumption, traces of what had
at one time been a beautiful face were clearly discernible. What had
she not suffered for years! Who could tell the many weary hours of
heart anguish she had passed through? And yet she was young--hardly
twenty-five years old. She had given up all that was near and dear,
and, for the years she had lived in the convent, she had tried to
appease God's justice for her early sin by mortifying and chastising
herself in a way that can only find a parallel in the doctrines of
Buddha. Oh, Madeline! poor, wounded, betrayed one! Who can wonder, as
you lay there with the fever of consumption running and coursing
through your veins, that, in spite of all the teachings and practices
of self-denial in the convent life in which you had lived so many
years, yet, when the hour of death drew nigh and your soul was
hovering on the borders of the unknown eternity, your thoughts once
more went back to the old home-scenes, and you longed, as only a
child can, for the sight of a mother's face, the sound of a mother's
voice, the cool, soothing touch of a mother's hand passing over your
brow? They tried to crush down the natural love that God placed in
your heart for your mother, but they could not. The use of the
discipline caused the blood to flow and gave you physical suffering;
fasting and long prayers made you weak, and thus incapable of
exercising will-power; and, when no other eye but God's was upon you,
whe