e would like to do. His wife was
not of our faith and was also too busily occupied to look after the
child. He did not mention that her occupation was that of society
butterfly, who sacrificed homelife, husband and child in the pursuit of
pleasure. Would Reverend Mother kindly undertake the charge of his
little Nita's education, spiritual as well as intellectual? Would she be
to the child what father and mother ought to be and could not?

Reverend Mother had gladly undertaken the task, and since then Nita had
never been separated from her even for a day. During the vacations, when
other pupils scattered far and wide to their various homes, Nita had
remained at the convent, roaming at will through the deserted
class-room and beautiful grounds. She was the pet and darling of the
entire community. In the long summer afternoons when the nuns carried
their sewing out to the orchard behind the house, or to the pine grove
on the hill, where one could obtain such a lovely view of the river,
Nita would flit about amongst them like a veritable woodland fairy. Her
snatches of song and merry laughter made sylvan echoes ring and brought
smiles to the faces of the simple women who watched her with loving
sympathetic glances.

Many a time, especially of late, had Reverend Mother looked at her with
anxious foreboding in her eyes. What would the future hold for this
child of hers, endowed as she was with singular beauty and a wonderful
voice? She was a docile child, sunny and sweet-tempered, and that very
pliancy of nature was what caused the nun many a moment of uneasiness.
What would become of her once she had left the shelter of her convent
home and was exposed to the influence of the light-hearted, merry,
soulless mother from whom she had inherited her beauty; the mother whose
only god was pleasure, whose one ambition was to be the best dressed,
the most popular, the most envied woman in her set. The only hope lay in
keeping Nita at the convent as long as possible, or at least until her
character had developed sufficiently to enable her to enter her mother's
world and hold her own against it. Still, Reverend Mother dreaded the
day when she must part with her child, and now that the parting had come
so unexpectedly, so much sooner than she had anticipated, it was doubly
hard to bear.

The nun knelt in the chapel that June evening and prayed with all her
heart, not only for the future of the girl whose voice filled the air
with suc