In the hot months of summer the place was like a Paradise to me, with its roses growing wild by the wayside; its green lizards running on the rocks; its goats; its sheep; its vineyards; its brown-faced boys in velvet, and its gleesome girls in smart red petticoats and gorgeous outside stays; its shrines and its blazing sunsets, which seemed to girdle the heavens with quivering bands of purple and gold.

Years went by without my being aware of their going, for after a while I became entirely happy.

I heard frequently from home.  Occasionally it was from Betsy Beauty, who had not much to say beyond stories of balls at Government House, where she had danced with the young Lord Raa, and of hunts at which she had ridden with him.  More rarely it was from Aunt Bridget, who usually began by complaining of the ever-increasing cost of my convent clothes and ended with accounts of her daughter’s last new costume and how well she looked in it.

From Nessy MacLeod and my father I never heard at all, but Father Dan was my constant correspondent and he told me everything.

First of my father himself—­that he had carried out many of his great enterprises, his marine works, electric railways, drinking and dancing palaces, which had brought tens of thousands of visitors and hundreds of thousands of pounds to Ellan, though the good Father doubted the advantage of such innovations and lamented the decline of piety which had followed on the lust for wealth.

Next of Aunt Bridget—­that she was bringing up her daughter in the ways of worldly vanity and cherishing a serpent in her bosom (meaning Nessy MacLeod) who would poison her heart some day.

Next, of Tommy the Mate—­that he sent his “best respec’s” to the “lil-missy” but thought she was well out of the way of the Big Woman who “was getting that highty-tighty” that “you couldn’t say Tom to a cat before her but she was agate of you to make it Thomas.”

Then of Martin Conrad—­that he was at college “studying for a doctor,” but his heart was still at the North Pole and he was “like a sea-gull in the nest of a wood pigeon,” always longing to be out on the wild waves.

Finally of the young Lord Raa—­that the devil’s dues must be in the man, for after being “sent down” from Oxford he had wasted his substance in riotous living in London and his guardian had been heard to say he must marry a rich wife soon or his estates would go to the hammer.

Such was the substance of the news that reached me over a period of six years.  Yet welcome as were Father Dan’s letters the life they described seemed less and less important to me as time went on, for the outer world was slipping away from me altogether and I was becoming more and more immersed in my spiritual exercises.

I spent much of my time reading religious books—­the life of Saint Teresa, the meditations of Saint Francis of Sales, and, above all, the letters and prayers of our Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, whose love of the Sacred Heart was like a flaming torch to my excited spirit.