]My father, my mother, are all goodness! God preserve their precious lives! Tears trickled down her cheeks.

I am sure, my dear Lady Clementina, you cannot be happy in amj state of HFe, if vour choice, pursued, would make your pare))ts unhappy. Could Lady Clementina, were she even prnfc’-.sed, divest herself of all filial, of all family regards? Would not that very contemplative life, of which she is at present so fond, make her, when it was too late to retrieve the step (and with the more regret, perhaps, because it ivas too late) carry her thoughts, her affections, with greater force, back to parents, if //r///^,so deservedly dear, to brothers so disinterestedly kind, to her; and who have all shared so largely in her distresses?

She sighed. She wept. O chevalier! was all she said.

You cannot, madam, live only to yourself, _/br yourself: and you may live to your God in the world, perhaps, more efficaciously than in the convent, with regard to your soul’s health, as you have such large ability to do good: for, wants not the world, as I have heretofore pleaded, such an example as you can give it? The heart, madam, not the profession is the truly acceptable. Your paternal grandfather, though a sound Catholic, wouid have it, that there were many sighing hearts in convents; and on this supposition (eonhrmed to him by a sin-gular instance which affected him) he inserted in his will the clauses which he thought would odli^e you to many. Your other grandfather joined in the fenforeement of them.

And what, Sir, was the penalty? Only the for-feiture of an estate, which I wish not for; which none of us want. We are all rich. It is a. purchased^ not a patenia! estate.

And purchased with what view, madam? And for whom?

I would have my family superior to such motives

Must they not, my dear Clementina, be judges for themselves?

I do not believe, proceeded she, that there are many sighing hearts in convents: but if there icere, and my friends would be satisfied (for that, 1 own, is an essential point with me) I should not, I am sure, add to the number of such. As to what you say of the world wanting such an example as I could set it, I have not vanity enough to be convinced by that argument. Whether my soul’s peace could be best promoted in the world, or in the convent, must be left to me to judge; who know that in the tur-moils and disturbances I have met with, both of mind and body, the retired, the sequestered life, is most likely to re-compose my shattered spirits.

Those turmoils, those disturbances, madam, thank God! are over.

I pity, I can forgive, I do forgive, the poor Lau-rana. Ah Sir! you know not, perhaps, that love, a passion which is often the cause of guilty meanness, as sometimes indeed of laudable greatness, was the secret cause of Laurana’s cruelty to me. She hated me not, till that passion invaded her bosom. Shall I remember the evil of her behaviour, and not the good?