Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/156

 would wear no habit, of course—though there was a rumor that she intended to dress entirely in white. She would, no doubt, be very strict in the observance of her religious duties as a zealous Catholic; but these, they inferred, merely implied daily attendance at mass and a good deal of prayer in the solitude of her own rooms. How much wiser this compromise, they gossiped, than to immure herself in a convent as she had wished to do after her graduation. And how absorbing it would all be to the looker-on! They sent her notes of good will and congratulation. Then they settled comfortably back in the orchestra chairs of their social circle and waited to see what she would do next.

What she did was to yield to some rather gloomy forebodings. It had not been of her own choice, this compromise so heartily approved by her friends. It made her, she reflected, sadly, neither the nun she longed to be nor the worldling her people wished her. She had pined for the cloister's quiet shelter and had begged permission to follow her choice, yet she had been quick to admit that a certain element of selfishness lay in the aspiration. Why should she leave the father and mother whose only child she was, whose love for her and pride in her were so great, whose