Page:Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (Truslove & Bray).djvu/239

235 questions intended to lead her to tell me something of her family, her former residence, or life. But, although so communicative on most other subjects, on this she evidently did not like to speak. Repeatedly have I known her to waive my inquiries, and many times, also, when I spoke very plainly, she would become silent, and refuse to speak a word. All this unwillingness only served to increase my desire to know the truth, but I ever was able to draw from her anything more than a very brief and general account of herself; for never, except on a single occasion, did she comply with my wishes so far as even to speak on the subject.

One night, when she had secretly left her bed and entered mine, she happened to be in a very communicative mood, though she appeared more depressed and deeply sunk in melancholy than I had ever known her before. She then informed me that she had become attached to an officer of the British army in Quebec, in whom she confided to her ruin, believing that he intended to marry her. She left her parents, and after a time proceeded with him to Montreal. There he invited her to visit the Hotel Dieu Nunnery, as a curiosity; but to her surprise, she suddenly found herself deserted by him, and the doors closed upon her. From what she observed or heard, she soon learnt that this was done in consequence of an arrangement made between the officer and the Superiors of the Seminary and Convent, the first having paid a large sum of money to have her shut up from the world.

I understood her to say that the officer was an aide-de-camp of the former governor of Canada, Sir Peregrine Maitland. The priests, she believed, knew her story, but few of the nuns, she thought, had any knowledge of it except myself.