tations
about princely bridegrooms! and broken lances and queens of beauty
seemed to fade into insignificance, or to be only incidents in the
tumult of secular life and worldly struggle, and her spirit quailed at
the anticipation of the journey she had once desired, the gay court with
its follies, empty show, temptations, coarsenesses and cruelties, and
the strange land with its new language. The alternative seemed to her
from Maudelin in her worldly days to Maudelin at the Saviour's feet, and
had Mother Margaret Stafford been one whit more the ideal nun, perhaps
every one would have been perplexed by a vehement request to seclude
herself at once in the cloister of St. Helen's.

Looking up, she saw a figure slowly pacing the turf walk. It was the
Mother Clare, who had come to see the Lady of Glenuskie, but finding all
so deeply engaged, had gone out to await her in the garden.

Much indeed had Dame Lilias longed to join her friend, and make the most
of these precious hours, but as purse-bearer and adviser to her Lady
Joanna, it was impossible to leave her till the arrangements with the
merchants were over. And the nuns of St. Helen's did not, as has already
been seen, think much of an uncloistered sister. In her twenty years'
toils among the poor it had been pretty well forgotten that Mother Clare
was Esclairmonde de Luxembourg, almost of princely rank, so that no
one took the trouble to entertain her, and she had slipped out almost
unperceived to the quiet garden with its grass walks. And there
Eleanor came up to her, and with glistening tears, on a sudden impulse
exclaimed, 'Oh, holy Mother, keep me with you, tell me to choose the
better part.'

'You, lady? What is this?'

'Not lady, daughter--help me! I kenned it not before--but all is vanity,
turmoil, false show, except the sitting at the Lord's feet.'

'Most true, my child. Ah! have I not felt the same? But we must wait His
time.'

'It was I--it was I,' continued Eleanor, 'who set Jean upon this
journey, leaving my brother and Mary and the bairns. And the farther we
go, the more there is of vain show and plotting and scheming, and I am
weary and heartsick and homesick of it all, and shall grow worse and
worse. Oh! shelter me here, in your good and holy house, dear Reverend
Mother, and maybe I could learn to do the holy work you do in my own
country.'

How well Esclairmonde knew it all, and what aspirations had been hers!
She took Elleen's hand kindly and s