'
'The house of Poole must have no charred mummy for its heiress,' said
old Dame Katharine; and Sir Mighell and his lady bowed their heads and
acquiesced.
It was agreed, then, that she should be sent to a house of 'close
nuns,' to be made a woman of religion, and so kept out of the sight of
all men's eyes. With this view, she was brought up; taught nothing
else; suffered to hope for nothing else; suffered to speak of nothing
else. But they could not bind her thoughts; and by a strange
perversity of will, these went always to the open fields and the
unfettered limb, to the vague picturing of freedom, and the dreamy
forecast of love. Yet she kept her peace; not daring to tell her mind
to any, and nourishing all the more strongly, because in silence, the
characteristics which destroyed the charm of a conventual life. When
she came to the years of discretion, she was to be professed; but, in
accordance with an old custom, before her profession she required to
enter the world for a season, that her 'vocation' might be judged of,
whether it were true or not, or simply the effect of education on the
one hand, and of ignorance on the other; and thus, when she was
fifteen years of age, she was dismissed to her father's house for the
space of six months' nominal trial, after which time she must return
to the convent for ever.
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