For some time after the exit of Soeur Ursule, the English girl retains her seat, with the same demure look she had worn in the presence of the nun; while before her face the book is again open, as though she had returned to reading it. One seeing this might suppose her intensely interested in its contents. But she is not even thinking of them! Instead, of a sharp skinny ear, and a steel-grey eye—one or other of which she suspects to be covering the keyhole.

Her own ear is on the alert to catch sounds outside—the shuffling of feet, the rattle of rosary beads, or the swishing of a dress against the door.

She hears none; and at length satisfied that Sister Ursule's suspicions are spent, or her patience exhausted, she draws a free breath—the first since the sÉance commenced.

Then rising to her feet, she steps to a corner of the cell not commanded by the keyhole, and there dashes the book down, as though it had been burning her fingers!

"My first scene of deception," she mutters to herself—"first act of hypocrisy. Have I not played it to perfection?"

She draws a chair into the angle, and sits down upon it. For she is still not quite sure that the spying eye has been withdrawn from the aperture, or whether it may not have returned to it.

"Now that I've made a beginning," she murmurs on, "I must think what's to be done in continuance, and how the false pretence is to be kept up. What will they do?—and think? They'll be suspicious for a while, no doubt; look sharply after me, as ever! But that cannot last always; and surely they won't doom me to dwell for ever in this dingy hole! When I've proved my conversion real, by penance, obedience, and the like, I may secure their confidence, and by way of reward, get transferred to a more comfortable chamber. Ah! little care I for the comfort, if convenient,—with a window out of which one could look. Then I might have a hope of seeing—speaking to some one with heart less hard than Sister Ursule's, and that other creature—a very hag!"

"I wonder where the place is? Whether in the country, or in a town among houses? It may be the last—in the very heart of a great city, for all this death-like stillness! They build these religious prisons with walls so thick! And the voices I from time to time hear are all women's. Not one of a man amongst them! They must be the convent people themselves! Nuns and novices! Myself one of the latter! Ha! ha! I shouldn't have known it if Sister Ursule hadn't informed me. Novice, indeed—soon to be a nun! No! but a free woman—or dead! Death would be better than life like this!"

The derisive smile that for a moment played upon her features passes off, replaced by the same forlorn woe-begone look, as despair comes back to her heart. For she again recalls what she has read in books—very different from that so contemptuously tossed aside—of girls young and beautiful as herself—high-born ladies—surreptitiously taken from their homes—shut up as she—never more permitted to look on the sun's light, or bask in its beams, save within the gloomy cloisters of a convent, or its dismally shadowed grounds.

The prospect of such future for herself appals her, eliciting an anguished sigh—almost a groan.

"Ha!" she exclaims the instant after, and again with altered air, as though something had arisen to relieve her. "There are voices now! Still of women! Laughter! How strange it sounds! So sweet! I've not heard such since I've been here. It's the voice of a girl! It must be—so clear, so joyous. Yes! Surely it cannot come from any of the sisters? They are never joyful—never laugh."

She remains listening, soon to hear the laughter again, a second voice joining in it, both with the cheery ring of school girls at play. The sound comes in with the light—it could not well enter otherwise—and aware of this, she stands facing that way, with eyes turned upward. For the window is far above her head.

"Would that I could see out! If I only had something on which to stand!"

She sweeps the cell with her eyes, to see only the pallet, the frail chairs, a little table with slender legs, and a washstand—all too low. Standing upon the highest, her eyes would still be under the level of the sill.

She is about giving it up, when an artifice suggests itself. With wits sharpened, rather than dulled by her long confinement—she bethinks her of a plan, by which she may at least look out of the window. She can do that by upending the bedstead!

Rash, she would raise it on the instant. But she is not so; instead, considerate, more than ever cautious. And so proceeding, she first places a chair against the door in such position that its back blocks the keyhole. Then, dragging bed-clothes, mattress, and all to the floor, she takes hold of the wooden framework; and, exerting her whole strength, hoists it on end, tilted like a ladder against the wall. And as such it will answer her purpose, the strong webbing, crossed and stayed, to serve for steps.

A moment more, and she has mounted up, and stands, her chin resting on the window's ledge.

The window itself is a casement on hinges; one of those antique affairs, iron framed, with the panes set in lead. Small, though big enough for a human body to pass through, but for an upright bar centrally bisecting it.

She, balancing upon the bedstead, and looking out, thinks not of the bar now, nor takes note of the dimensions of the aperture. Her thoughts, as her glances, are all given to what she sees outside. At the first coup d'oeil, the roofs and chimneys of houses, with all their appurtenances of patent smoke-curers, weathercocks, and lightning conductors; among them domes and spires, showing it a town with several churches.

Dropping her eyes lower, they rest upon a garden, or rather a strip of ornamental grounds, tree shaded, with walks, arbours, and seats, girt by a grey massive wall, high almost as the houses.

At a glance she takes in these inanimate objects; but does not dwell on any of them. For, soon as looking below, her attention becomes occupied with living forms, standing in groups, or in twos or threes strolling about the grounds. They are all women, and of every age; most of them wearing the garb of the nunnery, loose-flowing robes of sombre hue. A few, however, are dressed in the ordinary fashion of young ladies at a boarding school; and such they are—the pensionaires of the establishment.

Her eyes wandering from group to group, after a time become fixed upon two of the school-girls, who, linked arm in arm, are walking backward and forward directly in front. Why she particularly notices them, is that one of the two is acting in a singular manner; every time she passes under the window looking up to it, as though with a knowledge of something inside, in which she feels an interest! Her glances interrogative, are at the same time evidently snatched by stealth—as in fear of being observed by the others. Even her promenading companion seems unaware of them.

She inside the cloister, soon as her first surprise is over, regards this young lady with a fixed stare, forgetting all the others.

"What can it mean?" she asks herself. "So unlike the rest! Surely not French! Can she be English? She is very—very beautiful!"

The last, at least, is true, for the girl is, indeed, a beautiful creature, with features quite different from those around—all of them being of the French facial type, while hers are pronouncedly Irish.

By this the two are once more opposite the window, and the girl again looking up, sees behind the glass—dim with dust and spiders' webs—a pale face, with a pair of bright eyes gazing steadfastly at her.

She starts; but quickly recovering, keeps on as before. Then as she faces round at the end of the walk, still within view of the window, she raises her hand, with a finger laid upon her lips, seeming to say, plain as words could speak it,—

"Keep quiet! I know all about you, and why you are there."

The gesture is not lost upon the captive. But before she can reflect upon its significance, the great convent bell breaks forth in noisy clangour, causing a flutter among the figures outside, with a scattering helter-skelter; for it is the first summons to vespers, soon followed by the tinier tinkle of the angelus.

In a few seconds the grounds are deserted by all save one—the school-girl with the Irish features and eyes. She, having let go her companion's arm, and lingering behind the rest, makes a quick slant towards the window she has been watching; as she approaches it, significantly exposing something white she holds half hidden between her fingers!

It needs no further gesture to make known her intent. The English girl has already guessed it, as told by the iron casement grating back on its rusty hinges, and left standing ajar. On the instant of its opening, the white object parts from the hand that has been holding it, and, like a flash of light, passes through into the darksome cell, falling with a thud upon the floor.

Not a word goes with it; for she who has shown such dexterity, soon as delivering the missile, glides away—so speedily, she is still in time to join the queue moving on towards the convent chapel.

Cautiously reclosing the window, Soeur Marie descends the steps of her improvised ladder, and takes up the thing that had been tossed in; which she finds to be a letter shotted inside!

Despite her burning impatience, she does not open it till after restoring the bedstead to the horizontal, and replacing all as before. For now, as ever, she has need to be circumspect, and with better reasons.

At length, feeling secure, all the more from knowing the nuns are at their vesper devotions, she tears off the envelope, and reads,—

"Mary,—Monday night next, after midnight, if you look out of your window, you will see friends—among them

"Jack Wingate."

"Jack Wingate!" she exclaims, with a look of strange intelligence lighting up her face. "A voice from dear old Wyeside! Hope of delivery at last!"

And overcome by her emotion, she sinks down upon the pallet; no longer looking sad, but with an expression contented, and beatified as that of the most devotÉ nun in the convent.