Page:Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (Truslove & Bray).djvu/217

213 When Ann had gone, the Superior told me to go with her to her room, which I did. She there first made me promise never to tell of what she was going to do, and then produced the letters and package, and began to open them. One of the letters. I remember, was folded in a singular manner, and fastened with three seals. In the parcel was found a miniature of the young man, a pair of ear-rings, a breast pin, and something else, what, I have now forgotten. The letters were addressed to her by her lover, who advised her by all means too leave the Convent. He informed her that a cousin of hers, a tailor, had arrived from Scotland, who was in want of a housekeeper; and urged her to live with him, and never renounce the Protestant religion in which she had been brought up.

I was surprised that the Superior should do what I felt to be very wrong and despicable; but she represented it as perfectly justifiable on account of the good which she had in view.

I considered myself as bound to be particularly obedient to the Superior, in order that I might make my conduct correspond with the character given of me to her, by Miss Bousquier, who, as I have mentioned in the sequel of my first volume, had shown me an evidence of her friendship by recommending me to her, and becoming, in some sense, responsible for my good conduct to induce her to receive me back into the nunnery. This was a strong reason for my complying with the Superior's wish in the case of which I am speaking.

Since I have alluded here to the period of my return to the convent, I may remark that the Superior took some pains to ascertain, by her own inquiries, whether there was substantial reason for reliance on the favourable opinion expressed to her of me by Miss Bousquier. I recollect particularly her inquiring of me whom I had conversed with, while at St. Denis, to persuade them to enter the Black Nunnery; for Miss Bousquier, I