A Life Sentence. Sergeant Adeline
well-regulated household, even for a week, until matters were settled with the authorities of the workhouse which she had quitted and the orphanage to which she was going. The Rectory servants were indignant at having the society of "a murderer's child" forced upon them. If she had stayed much longer, they would have given notice in a body. But fortunately Mrs. Rumbold was able to arrange matters with the Winstead Sisters very speedily, and the day following the funeral of Mrs. Sydney Vane—laid to rest beside her husband only three months after his untimely death—saw Cynthia's little box packed, and herself, arrayed in neat but very unbecoming garments, conveyed by Mrs. Rumbold to the charitable precincts of St. Elizabeth's Orphanage at Winstead, where she was introduced to the black-robed, white-capped Sisters and a crowd of blue-cloaked children like herself as Jane Wood, orphan, from the village of Beechfield, in Hants.
However, Mrs. Rumbold told the whole of Cynthia's story to the Sister in charge of the Orphanage, a sweet-faced motherly woman, who looked as if children were dear to her. The one reservation made by the Rector's wife referred to the person or persons who were to pay the child's expenses. Their names, she said emphatically, were never to be mentioned. The good Sister smiled, and thought to herself that the very reservation told its own story. Of course it was the Vanes who were thus providing for Cynthia Westwood's continued absence from their village. It was natural perhaps.
She noticed that the child showed no sign of sorrow at parting from Mrs. Rumbold. She looked white, tired, almost stupefied. Sister Louisa took hold of the little hands, and found them cold and trembling.
When the Rector's wife was gone, the good woman—"the mother of the children," as she was sometimes called—drew the little girl to her knee and kissed her tenderly. It needed very little real affection to call forth a response in Cynthia's yearning heart. She burst into tears and buried her face in the mother's ample bosom, won from that moment to all the claims of love and duty, and a religion of which she as yet had scarcely heard the name.
As time went on, Mrs. Rumbold received letters from Sister Louisa relative to Jane Wood's progress. Jane Wood was, on the whole, a very satisfactory pupil. She was a girl of strong will and strong passions, often in disgrace, and yet a universal favorite. She possessed more than usual ability, and soon caught up with the girls of her own age who had at first been far in advance of her in class; then she surpassed them, and began to attract attention; and at the end of two years Mrs. Rumbold received a letter which perplexed her so sorely, that she sent it at once to Mr. Hubert Lepel, who was still living a bachelor-life in London.
The letter, from Sister Louisa, was to the effect that Jane Wood, the girl from Beechfield, had developed a great talent for music, and seemed very superior to the station of domestic service for which she had been designed. The Sister received twenty or thirty boarders—daughters of gentlemen for the most part, for whom ordinary terms were paid—in addition to the orphans; these girls of a superior class were educated by the Sisters, and often remained at St. Elizabeth's until they were eighteen or nineteen. If the amount paid for Jane Wood could be increased to forty pounds a year, the Sisters proposed to educate her as a governess; with her talent for music and other accomplishments, they were quite sure that the girl would turn out a credit to her kind patrons and patronesses, as well as to St. Elizabeth's.
Mr. Lepel sent back an answer by return of post. Jane Wood—he knew her by no other Christian name—was to have every advantage the good sisters could give her. If she had talents, they were to be cultivated. When she was old enough to be placed out in the world to earn her own living, his allowance would of course cease; till then, and while she wanted help, her friends would provide for her.
"So Westwood's child is to be made a lady of!" said Mrs. Rumbold, laying down the letter with a sense of virtuous indignation. "Well, I hope that Mr. Lepel won't repent it. I wonder what Miss Vane thinks of it?"
But Miss Vane had never even heard the name of Jane Wood.
Hubert Lepel was gradually achieving literary success. But the road to success is often stony and beset with thorns and briars. His name was becoming known as that of a writer of popular fiction; he had a play in hand of which people prognosticated great things. For all these reasons he was much too busy to give any special attention to the affairs of the child at St. Elizabeth's School. He agreed to Sister Louisa's proposition, and sent money for the girl's education—that was all that he could do. And so another year went by, and then another, and he heard nothing more about Jane Wood.
But at the close of a London season, when town was emptying fast and the air was becoming exhausted, and everybody who had a chance of going into the country was sighing to be off, it occurred to Hubert Lepel to wonder how the child that he had befriended was progressing. It took little time for him to make up his mind that he would go down to Winstead and see the school, which was quite a show-place and had been a great deal talked about. A card and a line from a clerical friend would introduce him, and his literary work gave him an excuse for wishing to inspect the institution. It would be supposed that he meant to write an article upon it. He did not intend to say why he had come.
The building occupied by the Sisters of St. Elizabeth was certainly beautiful and picturesque. Hubert remembered with a half smile the enthusiastic praise that Mrs. Rumbold had bestowed upon it. The chapel, an exquisite little gem of Gothic architecture, stood in the centre, flanked by two long gray wings appropriated to the school-girls and their teachers, the Orphanage and the Sisterhood. St. Elizabeth's was becoming quite a noted school for girls, especially among persons of High Anglican proclivities; and in surveying the lovely buildings, the exquisitely-kept grounds, the smooth lawns and shrubberies which met his eyes. Hubert could not but acknowledge that the outer appearance of the place was all that could be desired. The school buildings were swathed in purple clematis and roses; there was a pleasant hum of voices, even of laughter, from some of the deep mullioned windows; and he saw a host of children sporting on the lawn in the distance. The scene was bright, peaceful, and joyous. Hubert Lepel felt a momentary thrill of relief; he had done well for Westwood's child—he need not reproach himself on that score.
A portress with a rosy smiling face admitted him into a visitors' room, a small but cosy place, with vases of flowers on the table, sacred pictures and a black-and-white crucifix on the yellow-washed walls. Here a Sister clad in conventual garb came to inquire his business. The stillness of the house, the unfamiliar aspect of the women's dresses, reminded Hubert of some French and Flemish Romanist convents which he had visited abroad. He was charmed with the likeness. It was something, he said to himself, to find such serenity, such sweet placidity of life, possible in the very midst of nineteenth-century England, with all her turmoil and bustle and distraction. He did not discuss with himself the question as to whether the life led by the inmates of these retreats was wholesome or agreeable; it was simply on the æsthetic side that its aspect pleased him. He could fancy himself for a moment in the depths of a foreign land or far back in remote mediæval times.
Could he see the buildings, the church, the school, the orphanage? Oh, certainly! Sister Agnes, who had come to him, would be pleased to show him everything.
She was very pleasant in manner, and he had no difficulty in obtaining from her any amount of information about the institution. It seemed that he had by chance come on a festival day, and every one was making holiday. The children were all out in the fields or the garden; he could see their schoolrooms and dormitories and refectory. They were all rather bare, exquisitely clean and airy, full of the most recent improvements as regarded educational appliances.
"This is the Orphanage building," Sister Agnes explained. "We do not generally show the class-rooms belonging to the other school; but, as all the ladies are out, you may see them if you like."
So Hubert peeped into the rooms, occupied by the girl-boarders, who were on a very different footing from the orphans, and whose surroundings, though simple, were almost elegant in their simplicity. The furniture was of good artistic design, the windows were emblazoned in jewel-like colors, the proportions of the rooms were stately as those of an Oxford college hall. Hubert smiled a little at the picture of Westwood's ragged daughter amidst all this magnificence.
Last of all he was shown the chapel, the most beautiful building of the place, and on this day in particular largely decorated with the choicest