h, that was never a
doubt to me save for a very brief space," she replied. "I am like the
Cure de Ars--'I know some one who would be finely taken in if there
were no Paradise!'" Her exquisiteness of look, the fascinating talk,
the soft, helpless manner are so appealing that one is disposed to
treat her as some wandered denizen of the air and skies, though she
hangs effortless, her whole weight upon one, and there is scarce a
limit to her fine-lady and delicate-organization requirements.

The daughter of a Low Church dean, she became, in her husband's time,
first broad church, then rationalist; after his death, because of
extraordinary, extra natural occurrences that befell her, a
spiritualist, and now she seems to be turning toward Catholicism,
though Miss Hedges, who is a Catholic, shakes her head, and says she
always feels very hopeless of people essentially given to all manner of
vague interpretations, fanciful twistings of simple doctrine, and
aesthetic sentimental mysticism.

"Obedience is in the order of existence," says the little lady. "I long
for authority; I long for a voice I shall not question, to whose
decision I can submit all the questions that torture me."

"I tried to stay my soul with ritualism," she said, talking to Miss H.
and myself when we were alone after dinner, "and at first I thought I
was going to get some comfort out of it. I made my father furious by
entering one of Miss ----'s famous sisterhoods. But it wouldn't do.
Ritualism of course was not more illogical then than now, but the
actors weren't as well up in their parts, and how queer some of our
performances at ---- were! I remember a retreat I made there, in which
I was put into a cell bare of everything save a table and chair, and a
Testament upon the table, and there I was left alone the whole day,
seeing no creature save a Sister who, speechless, thrust my dinner and
tea in at me! You may imagine the imbecile condition in which night
found me.

"And as a punishment for some fault I was ordered to go to communion
for four months without going to confession! Miss ----, our Reverend
Mother, behaved exactly as if she had taken her notions of the external
character and dignities of her office from some swelling, stern, ridiculous
Lady Abbess in a no-popery novel! We undertook everything--teaching,
the care of hospitals, training of servants, district work, Magdalen
houses, and to these active employments we joined the contemplative,
s