the breviary on the desk.

And exquisite they were. The book had been brought from Italy and
presented to the Prioress by a merchant who wished to place his daughter
in St. Helen's, and the beauty was unspeakable. There were natural
flowers painted so perfectly that the scattered violets seemed to invite
the hand to lift them up from their gold-besprinkled bed, and flies and
beetles that Eleanor actually attempted to drive away; and at all the
greater holy days, the type and the antitype covering the two whole
opposite pages were represented in the admirable art and pure colouring
of the early Cinquecento.

Eleanor and Annis were entranced, and the Prioress, seeing that books
had an attraction for her younger guest, promised her on the morrow a
sight of some of the metrical lives of the saints, especially of St.
Katharine and of St. Cecilia. It must be owned that Jean was not fretted
as she expected by chapel bells in the middle of the night, nor was
even Lady Drummond summoned by them as she intended, but there was a
conglomeration of the night services in the morning, with beautiful
singing, that delighted Eleanor, and the festival mass ensuing was also
more ornate than anything to be seen in Scotland. And that the extensive
almsgiving had not been a vain boast was evident from the swarms of poor
of all kinds who congregated in the outer court for the attention of
the Sisters Almoner and Infirmarer, attended by two or three novices and
some lay-sisters.

There were genuine poor, ragged forlorn women, and barefooted, almost
naked children, and also sturdy beggars, pilgrims and palmers on their
way to various shrines, north or south, and many more for whom a dole of
broth or bread sufficed; but there were also others with heads or limbs
tied up, sometimes injured in the many street fights, but oftener with
the terrible sores only too common from the squalid habits and want of
vegetable diet of the poor. These were all attended to with a tenderness
and patience that spoke well for the charity of Sister Anne and her
assistants, and indeed before long Dame Lilias perceived that, however
slack and easy-going the general habits might be, there were truly meek
and saintly women among the sisterhood.

The morning was not far advanced before a lay-sister came hurrying in
from the portress's wicket to announce that my Lord Cardinal was on his
way to visit the ladies of Scotland. There was great commotion. Mother
Margaret su