Page:Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (Truslove & Bray).djvu/246

Rh, she replied very coldly, and showed at first no disposition to interchange more than a salutation with me. She soon, however, took an opportunity to write something on a bit of paper with a pencil, and to slip it into my hand, which I eagerly read as soon as I could safely do so; and there I found an explanation of her conduct. She intimated that she was unwilling to confide in the Superior, but wished to see me alone the first opportunity.

We soon after had a secret interview, for one night she stole into my bed, and we lay and talked together. She then appeared quite unreserved, and perfectly cordial, and repeated that she believed the Superior was only a spy over us. We soon found that we had been acquaintances in former years, and had been in the Congregational Nunnery together, but after her leaving it, I had met her twice in the street, and heard of her from some one; her family being so wealthy, we had no intercourse in society. She was from a place behind the mountain, where her father, I believe, was a grocer, and a man of wealth. She had an uncle McDonald.

I learnt from her the circumstances under which she entered the nunnery; and they were peculiar. She had not passed a noviciate, but had purchased her admission without such preparation, by the paying of a large sum of money, as she had peculiar reasons for wishing for it.

My restless anxiety was thus in a degree relieved, for I found that my impressions were right, and that St Thomas was not a nun in the common meaning of the word; but, on the other hand, I found I had been deceived in believing that all admitted into the Convent had to pass through the same long trial and training to which I had been subject.

The state of things in the nunnery cannot be fully understood, without a knowledge of the fact, that much jealousy always exists between some of the nuns, on account of their preferences for particular priests. And yet a priest once told me, that there was more