Page:Watch and Ward (Boston, Houghton, Osgood and Company, 1878).djvu/116

Rh a good girl three years ago and done as you wished, and taken drawing-lessons in earnest. Dear Roger, I never neglected your advice but to my cost. Mrs. Keith is extremely kind, and determined I shall have not come abroad to 'mope,' as she says. She does not care much for sight-seeing, having done it all before; though she keeps pretty well au courant of the various church festivals. She very often talks of you, and is very fond of you. She is full of good points, but that is her best one. My own sight-seeing habits do not at all incommode her, owing to my having made the acquaintance of a little old German lady who lives at the top of our house. She is a queer wizened oddity of a woman, but she is very clever and friendly, and she has the things of Rome on her fingers' ends. The reason of her being here is very sad and beautiful. Twelve years ago her younger sister, a beautiful girl (she has shown me her miniature), was deceived and abandoned by her betrothed. She fled away from her home, and after many weary wanderings found her way to Rome, and gained admission to the convent with the dreadful name,—the Sepolte Vive. Here, ever since, she has been immured. The inmates are literally buried alive; they are dead to the outer world. My poor little Mademoiselle Stamm followed her and took up her dwelling here, to be near her. But they have a dead stone wall between them. For twelve years she has never seen her. Her only communication with Lisa—her conventual name she does n't even know—is once a week to deposit a bouquet of flowers, with her name attached, in the little blind wicket of the convent wall. To do this with her own hands, she lives in Rome.