On my return to the kitchen I found the sick nun sitting as we left her.  She asked me, by signs, if we were alone.  I told her she need not fear to speak, for the Superior was two flights of stairs above, and no one else was near.  “Are they all away?” she whispered.  I assured her that we were quite alone, that she had nothing to fear.  She then informed me that she had been nine days under punishment, that when taken from the cell she could not stand or speak, and she was still too weak to walk without assistance.  “O!” said she, and the big tears rolled over her cheeks as she said it, “I have not a friend in the world.  You do not know how my heart longs for love, for sympathy and kindness.”  I asked if she had not parents, or friends, in the world.  She replied, “I was born in this convent, and know no world but this.  You see,” she continued, with a sad smile, “what kind of friends I have here.  O, if I had A friend, if I could feel that one human being cares for me, I should get better.  But it is so long since I heard a kind word—­” a sob choked her utterance.  I told her I would be a friend to her as far as I could.  She thanked me; said she was well aware of the difficulties that lay in my way, for every expression of sympathy or kind feeling between the nuns was strictly forbidden, and if caught in anything of the kind a severe correction would follow.  “But,” said she “if you will give me a kind look sometimes, whenever you can do so with safety, it will be worth a great deal to me.  You do not know the value of a kind look to a breaking heart.”

She wept so bitterly, I feared it would injure her health, and to divert her mind, I told her where I was born; spoke of my childhood, and of my life at the White Nunnery.  She wiped away her tears, and replied, “I know all about it.  I have heard the priests talk about you, and they say that your father is yet living, that your mother was a firm protestant, and that it will be hard for them to beat Catholicism into you.  But I do not know how you came in that nunnery.  Who put you there?” I told her that I was placed there by my father, when only six years old.  “Is it possible?” she exclaimed, and then added passionately, “Curse your father for it.”  After a moments silence, she continued, “Yes, child; you have indeed cause to curse your father, and the day when you first entered the convent; but you do not suffer as much as you would if you had been born here, and were entirely dependent on them.  They fear that your friends may sometime look after you; and, in case they are compelled to grant them an interview, they would wish them to find you in good health and contented; but if you had no influential friends outside the convent, you would find yourself much worse off than you are now.”