Page:Peterson's Magazine 1842, Volume I.pdf/36

. THE SISTER NUN.

It was in the year 18-, when the English army were encamped near Lisbon, that two British officers paid a visit to the Convent of St. Clara. It enclosed within its walls, at that period, two sisters, beautiful and unfortunate girls, who had taken the vows, which rendered them wretched for life, under circumstances of the most unprincipled deception. Their story interested the feelings, and their beauty gave rise to deeper impressions in the breasts of two romantic young men and repeated interviews ended in the young officers offering to carry off to England these victims of deception, and there to make them their own for life. The wretched state ofthe country-the storm of conventual persecution, of all others the most severe and most pitiless-induced the Nuns to give their enterprizing admirers a willing assent. Colonel Pierrepoint and Sir Harry Trelawney were both men of family and fortune; and Constance and Inez de Castro readily believed them men of honor. It was speedily arranged that Colonel Pierrepoint's brother, who commanded a man of war then lying under sailing orders in the bay, should receive the fugitives on board, and convey them to England. There, their lovers were to join them, immediately on obtaining leave of absence.

After almost insupportable delays, the signal that the Andromache would sail on the morrow, and that their lovers would be under the western wall at twelve that night, was perceived in the Convent. The hour, so important to some beating hearts, arrived. The bay of Lisbon lay clear and blue in the summer moonlight ; the man-of-war's boat, with muffled oars, was stationed at a little distance from the shore ; and the gray massy building in the Convent was distinctly visible through the bending foliage of the lines that surrounded it.

The hour had barely struck, when a female form appeared above the Convent wall. "She's mine," cried Pierrepoint, as the high-minded Constance, to inspire courage in her sister, and show her the example, first descended the rope-ladder. Inez attempted to follow her : but, from some accident never explained, the ladder slipped-she faltered-tottered-and, attempting to grasp one of the buttresses of the wall, fell over into the grounds of the Convent. The scream of agony which escaped her, and the frenzied exclamations of Trelawney, alarmed the sisterhood, who rushed in crowds to the spot, and, after a search, found the insensible Inez. Trelawney was dragged, by main force, from the spot, while Constance was hurried on board the Andromache, which conveyed her to England. There, her lover soon after joined her, but as a lover only. The sacred name of wife he faithlessly withheld from her ; and, to the agony of being betrayed by the man she loved, were added the most fearful apprehensions for her sister, and the unceasing reproaches of her own heart. Of Inez, or of Trelawney, she could obtain no tidings. Pierrepoint was ignorant, or pretended ignorance, as to what became of either ; and, hardly daring to reflect on the fate of her sister, yet hoping that it was happier than her own, she continued to live on. The past only furnished her with a subject of regret ; the future with a source of gloomy anticipation.

Three years of her life she had thus dragged on, a cold, deserted, joyless being, unloving and unloved, devouring her sorrows in wretched solitude, with every capacity for happiness turned inward on herself and converted into so many sources of the most exquisite misery-when Pierrepoint, coming, unexpectedly to a title, and feeling some little compunction towards the woman he had so cruelly deceived, determined on offering her all the reparation in his power, and made her his wife. It was a few weeks after this event, at the opera, blazing with jewels, and adorned as a bride, her personfaded indeed from its former loveliness, but still sufficiently beautiful to be the attraction of the evening-was recognised by Sir Harry Trelawney. An invitation brought him to her box. In a voice hardly articulate from emotion, she asked for her sister.

"Can you bear to hear the truth ?" said Trelawney, anxiously.

"Any thing-every thing"-she exclaimed- -"but suspense."

He then told her, cautiously, that, disregarding the agony which Inez endured from a limb fractured in two places, the superior, discovering she yet lived, had her instantly conveyed to the Refectory, where the nuns repaired in full assembly :-that thence, without her limb being set, or any relief afforded her, the hapless victim was hurried to the fatal cell, where, between four walls , with her loaf of bread and cruse of water, she underwent the lingering death entailed on broken vows.

"My agony," Trelawney added, " at discovering her fate, you may conceive, but I cannot describe. Her affection- her devotion- her reliance on my honor- all, at this moment, rise before me. In the last words she was heard to utter, she forgave her seducer-he never can forgive himself."

Constance uttered no scream- no shriek-not a sound escaped her-but she was never seen to smile again. With her, the season of hope was at an end. After an ineffectual struggle to stay in a world she could enjoy no longer,-without the ties of children to bind her to society, without affection to console her, without friendship to advise her, —she entreated Lord Pierrepoint to loosen his hold on his victim, and allow her to return into a convent. This request her husband-though a libertine in principle, and now without affection for her, yet pleased with the admiration she excited-alternately refused and derided. Perceiving her entreaties were renewed with increasing earnestness, and incensed at Trelawney's communication, in a moment of irritation he