pain and sore, she lay like a dead thing, but for the wailing moans
which shewed her sad title yet to a ruined existence. Alas for her
that she did not die! Wo, that life was so strong in her now, when,
blemished and disfigured for ever, she might not hold its honours or
taste its joys!--now, when she must endure a worse thing than death
for the sake of her family name! 'Therefore,' says the chronicle, 'she
was in a manner loathed of her parents, and kept forth secretly from
the common knowledge of the people.'

'The house of Poole must have no charred mummy for its heiress,' said
old Dame Katharine; and Sir Mighell and his lady bowed their heads and
acquiesced.

It was agreed, then, that she should be sent to a house of 'close
nuns,' to be made a woman of religion, and so kept out of the sight of
all men's eyes. With this view, she was brought up; taught nothing
else; suffered to hope for nothing else; suffered to speak of nothing
else. But they could not bind her thoughts; and by a strange
perversity of will, these went always to the open fields and the
unfettered limb, to the vague picturing of freedom, and the dreamy
forecast of love. Yet she kept her peace; not daring to tell her mind
to any, and nourishing all the more strongly, because in silence, the
characteristics which destroyed the charm of a conventual life. When
she came to the years of discretion, she was to be professed; but, in
accordance with an old custom, before her profession she required to
enter the world for a season, that her 'vocation' might be judged of,
whether it were true or not, or simply the effect of education on the
one hand, and of ignorance on the other; and thus, when she was
fifteen years of age, she was dismissed to her father's house for the
space of six months' nominal trial, after which time she must return
to the convent for ever.

Now, Dame Katharine a Poole, Jane's paternal grandmother, was a
fierce, proud old woman, whose heart was set on the creation of her
son's house, and whose very virtue was her family pride. When she
heard of Jane's return to the outer world of men, she hastily rode
over to see this ugly, despised thing, and to take her from her
father's castle to the grim quiet of her own dungeon-like home, if so
be that she was as unlovely as report had spoken her. They met; and
for a moment the proud old dame was struck as by death. The seamed and
scarred face, the closed eyes--one perfectly sightless, the other