Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/175

 this paragon daughter of his while he talked to the fine fellow who would anchor her for ever out in the busy world, safely away from the convent walls he had feared would yet close around her. To him, the convent had been a hungry thing, reaching out long arms to grasp his treasure.

She had made many happy by this choice of hers—herself the happiest of all. Sister George was pleased, too—Sister George, no doubt tucked away now in her little cell, peacefully asleep. At the thought a sudden memory stirred in the girl's mind.

"Dick," she said,—how easily and naturally the name came to her lips!—"do you know that you really owe me to a nun? I had decided to-day to—to give you up. I don't know how I could have done it as I look back now, but I was determined. And Sister George brought me to my senses. She really made a very eloquent plea for you. You should have heard it. And by-the-way," she added, suddenly, "she spoke as if she knew you. I hardly noticed it at the time, but now I recall it. She has been in the convent twenty years, but somebody told me once that when she entered her family lived in Boston. Her name in the world was Margaret Canterbury. It seems too strange to be true, but do you know anything about her?"