ctures and images, under a gloomy heaven
of cathedral arches. There, indeed, the faithful have given their
substance; but here the nun has given up the most precious part of her
woman's nature, and all the tenderness that clings about the thought of
wife and mother.

"There are some things that always greatly afflict me in the idea of a
new country," said Basil, as they loitered slowly through the grounds of
the convent toward the gate. "Of course, it's absurd to think of men as
other than men, as having changed their natures with their skies; but a
new land always does seem at first thoughts like a new chance afforded
the race for goodness and happiness, for health and life. So I grieve
for the earliest dead at Plymouth more than for the multitude that
the plague swept away in London; I shudder over the crime of the first
guilty man, the sin of the first wicked woman in a new country;
the trouble of the first youth or maiden crossed in love there is
intolerable. All should be hope and freedom and prosperous life upon
that virgin soil. It never was so since Eden; but none the less I
feel it ought to be; and I am oppressed by the thought that among the
earliest walls which rose upon this broad meadow of Montreal were those
built to immure the innocence of such young girls as these and shut them
from the life we find so fair. Wouldn't you like to know who was the
first that took the veil in this wild new country? Who was she, poor
soul, and what was her deep sorrow or lofty rapture? You can fancy her
some Indian maiden lured to the renunciation by the splendor of symbols
and promises seen vaguely through the lingering mists of her native
superstitions; or some weary soul, sick from the vanities and vices,
the bloodshed and the tears of the Old World, and eager for a silence
profounder than that of the wilderness into which she had fled. Well,
the Church knows and God. She was dust long ago."

From time to time there had fallen little fitful showers during the
morning. Now as the wedding-journeyers passed out of the convent gate
the rain dropped soft and thin, and the gray clouds that floated through
the sky so swiftly were as far-seen Gray Sisters in flight for heaven.

"We shall have time for the drive round the mountain before dinner,"
said Basil, as they got into their carriage again; and he was giving the
order to the driver, when Isabel asked how far it was.

"Nine miles."

"O, then we can't think of going with