CHAPTER LII.
"My father had placed me in the convent expressly as a Protestant, and it is only justice to the sisterhood amongst whom I lived to say, that they did not, for several years, seek to unsettle my mind; but having had no instructions as to any other mode of faith, and being, by the rules of the establishment, required to join in the gorgeous services, though exempted from the penances of the order, every succeeding year drew me imperceptibly into their circle. I was affectionate and imaginative; devotion alone seemed to supply the want of my heart; and I therefore, in time, entered warmly into that faith by which their forms expressed it, and was already ripe for that which they would have proclaimed as conversion, proceeding from our patron-saint, when the death of my father was announced, at the very time when I was in daily expectation of receiving his accustomed visit, and had fully in-
