the taking of
the vows was like a marriage service too--only more solemn and sacred
and touching--the bride receiving the ring on her finger, and promising
to serve and worship her celestial lover from that day forward, for
better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, as
long as life should last and through the eternity that was to follow it.

I cried all through the ceremony for sheer joy of its loveliness; and
when it was over and we went into the refectory, and Mildred told me she
was returning to England to work among the fallen girls of London, I
vowed in my heart, though I hardly understood what she was going to do,
that I would follow her example.

It was something of a jar to go back into the streets, so full of noise
and bustle; and all the way home with the Reverend Mother I was forming
the resolution of telling her that very night that I meant to be a nun,
for, stirred to the depths of my soul by what I had seen and remembering
what my poor mother had wished for me, I determined that no other life
would I live under any circumstances.

Then came the shock.

As we drew up at our door a postman was delivering letters. One of them
was for the Reverend Mother and I saw in a moment that it was in my
father's handwriting. She read it in silence, and in silence she handed
it to me. It ran:

"_Madam,

"I have come to Rome to take back my daughter. I believe her education
will now be finished, and I reckon the time has arrived to prepare her
for the change in life that is before her.

"The Bishop of our diocese has come with me, and we propose to pay our
respects to you at ten o'clock prompt to-morrow morning.

"Yours, Madam_,

"DANIEL O'NEILL."

NINETEENTH CHAPTER

I saw, as by a flash of light, what was before me, and my whole soul
rose in rebellion against it. That my father after all the years during
which he had neglected me, should come to me now, when my plans were
formed, and change the whole current of my life, was an outrage--an
iniquity. It might be his right--his natural right--but if so his
natural right was a spiritual wrong--and I would resist it--to my last
breath and my last hour I would resist it.

Such were the brave thoughts with which I passed that night, but at ten
o'clock next morning, when I was summoned to meet my father himself, it
was on trembling limbs and with a quivering heart that I went down to
the Reverend Mother's room.

Except that hi