little to do. The Superior
herself had been struck with the fever, and in three days she
was dead. Her vigils, her fastings, the wearying abnegations
of her stern, hard life had left her little strength for
struggling against the disease when it laid hold of her at
last, and so she too died in her cell one cold, bleak March
morning, with a hushed sisterhood gathered round her death-
bed, and gazing on it, as on that of a departing saint. Little
beloved, but much revered, Therese Linders also had got that
she had laboured for, and was now gone to prove the worth of
it; that which she had valued most in her narrow world had
been awarded her to the full--much honour, but small affection;
much glorification to her memory as to one of surpassing
sanctity, few tears of tender or regretful recollection. She
had had a strange, loveless life, with a certain pathos in it
too, as in the life of every human being, if looked at aright.
Not always, one may imagine, had such cold, relentless
pietism, such harsh indifference possessed her. She lies there
now, still and silent for evermore on earth, a crucifix
between her hands, tapers burning at her head and feet, with
the hard lines fixed on her cold grey face; and yet she also
had been a little, soft, round child, with yearnings too, like
other children, for a mother's kisses and a mother's love. "Go
away, Adolphe, you are very naughty, and I do not love you;
mamma always kisses you, and she never, never kisses me!" This
little speech, uttered by our poor saintly Superior when she
was but eight years old, may perhaps give the key to much in
her after life; and if we cannot, with an admiring sisterhood,
henceforth count this unhappy, soured woman in our catalogue
of saints, we will at least grant her a place amongst the
great company of "might-have-beens," most inscrutable problems
in this puzzling life of ours, and so bid her a not unkindly
farewell.

Madelon, meanwhile, knew nothing of these things; she had
taken the fever also, and while death was busy in other parts
of the convent, she lay unconscious in her little cell,
tossing in delirium, or lying in feverish stupor, with Soeur
Lucie coming softly in and out. In this desolated overworked
household, the child had come to be considered as only another
item of trouble, hardly of anxiety; for her life or death just
then was felt to be of the very smallest consequence to any
one. The one tie that had bound her to the convent h