eagerly awaiting the reply to the letters they had written to their
homes requesting permission to return. They were all young, and several
of them pretty; but as they had been among the most sincere of the
sisterhood, so they had the most rigidly performed all the fasts,
penances, vigils, imposed on them, and already the bloom of youth had
departed, and the pallor or the ascetic had taken its place.

Poor girls! they had sought peace, but found none; they desired to be
holy, but they had discovered that fasts, penances, and vigils--the
daily routine of formal services--long prayers, oft repeated, had
produced no effect; that their spirits might be broken by this system,
but that it could change their hearts.

"We are shut out from the great world, certainly," wrote one of them,
"but we have one within these walls, and a poor miserable, trivial,
life-frittering, childish, querulous, useless, hopeless set of
inhabitants it contains. This is not the house of Martha, and Mary, and
Lazarus--this is not such an abode as Jesus would desire to lodge in.
If He were to visit us, it would be to tell us to go forth into the
world to fulfil our duties as women, not, like cowards, to shrink from
them, to fight the good fight of faith, to serve Him in the stirring
world into which He came, in which He walked, in which He lived, that He
might be an example to us. Though He has not come to our convent, He
has sent us a message full of love and compassion--His Testament, the
Gospel--and it has given us fresh life, fresh hopes, fresh aspirations;
and through its teaching we are sure of the Holy Spirit which He
promised. Other books have been sent us to assist in opening our eyes.
We are convinced that this mode of life is not the one for which we were
born; that it is a life, not of holiness, but of sin, for it is useless,
for it is aimless, for it is against the teaching of the Gospel."

The answers came at length. Tears flowed from the eyes of some, sobs
burst from the bosoms of others, while several turned paler even than
before, and their hands hung hopelessly by their sides. Many of the
letters were full of kind expressions, while other parents chided their
daughters harshly for contemplating the possibility of breaking their
vows, and abandoning the life of holiness to which they were devoted;
but one and all wound up by declaring that they would not allow such a
stigma to rest on their noble families as would arise were t