away. Another feeling took its
place: the thought that the after-bond was dissolved now, and death had
made him mine again.

"Mother Annora," said the Lady Joan's soft voice, "will you reject me,
and look coldly on me, if I ask whether you can love me a little? He
used to love to talk to me of you, whom he remembered tenderly, as he
might have remembered a little sister that God had taken. He often
wondered where you were, and whether you were happy. And when I was a
little child, I always wanted to hear of that other child--you lived,
eternal, a little child, for me. Many a time I have fancied that I
would make retreat here, and try to find you out, if you were still
alive. Do you think it sinful to love any thing?--some nuns do. But if
not, I should like you to love the favourite child of your lost love."

"Methinks," said Margaret, quietly, "it is true in earthly as in
heavenly things, and to carnal no less than spiritual persons, `_Major
horum est caritas_.'" [First Corinthians 13, verse 13.]

I hardly know what I said. But I think Joan was satisfied.

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Note 1. Her thoughts wandered to her married sister, Isabel Lady
Hastings and Monthermer, who lived at Marlborough Castle.

Note 2. The last native Princess of Wales, being the only (certainly
proved) child of the last Prince Llywelyn, and Alianora de Montfort.
She was thrust into the convent at Sempringham with her cousin Gladys.

PART THREE, CHAPTER 4.

MORTIFYING THE WILL.

"L'orgueil n'est jamais mieux deguise, et plus capable de tromper, que
lorsqu'il se cache sous la figure de l'humilite."

Rochefoucauld.

"Oh, you have no idea how happy we are here!" said Sister Ada to Joan.
"I often pity the people who live in the world. Their time is filled
with such poor, mean things, and their thoughts must be so frivolous.
Now our time is all taken up with holy duties, and we have no room for
frivolous thoughts. The world is shut out: it cannot creep in here. We
are the happiest of women."

I happened to look at Sister Gaillarde, and I saw the beginning of one
of her grim smiles: but she did not speak.

"Some of you do seem happy and peaceful," said Joan (she says I am to
call her Joan). "But is it so with all?"

Sister Gaillarde gave her little Amen nod.

"Oh dear, yes!" answered Sister Ada. "Of course, where the will is not
perfectly mortified, there is