d, "it is a hard
trial; but try, dearest, to remember who sends it."

She was silent a moment; then said, reluctantly, "Elsie, your papa has
entrusted me with a message to you, which I was to deliver after your
visit to the Oaks, unless you had then come to the resolution to comply
with his wishes, or rather, his commands."

She paused, and Elsie, trembling, and almost holding her breath, asked
fearfully, "What is it, Aunt Adelaide?"

"Poor darling!" murmured Adelaide, clasping the little form more closely,
and pressing her lips to the fair brow; "I wish I could save you from it.
He says that if you continue obdurate, he has quite determined to send
you to a convent to be educated."

As Adelaide made this announcement, she pitied the child from the bottom
of her heart; for she knew that much of Elsie's reading had been on the
subject of Popery and Papal institutions; that she had pored over
histories of the terrible tortures of the Inquisition and stories of
martyrs and captive nuns, until she had imbibed an intense horror and
dread of everything connected with that form of error and superstition.
Yet, knowing all this, Adelaide was hardly prepared for the effect of
her communication.

"Oh, Aunt Adelaide!" almost shrieked the little girl, throwing her arms
around her aunt's neck, and clinging to her, as if in mortal terror,
"Save me! save me! Oh! tell papa I would rather he would kill me at once,
than send me to such a place."

And she wept and sobbed, and wrung her hands in such grief and terror,
that Adelaide grew absolutely frightened.

"They will not dare to hurt you, Elsie," she hastened to say.

"Oh, they will! they will!--they will try to make me go to mass, and
pray to the Virgin, and bow to the crucifixes; and when I refuse, they
will put me in a dungeon and torture me."

"Oh, no, child," replied Adelaide soothingly, "they will not _dare_ to do
so to _you_, because you will not be a nun, but only a boarder, and your
papa would be sure to find it all out."

"No, no!" sobbed the little girl, "they will hide me from papa when he
comes, and tell him that I want to take the veil, and refuse to see him;
or else they will say that I am dead and buried. Oh, Aunt Adelaide, beg
him not to put me there! I shall go crazy! I feel as if I were going
crazy now!" and she put her hand to her head.

"Poor, poor child!" said Adelaide, weeping. "I wish it was in my power to
help you. I would once have advised you to s