Had not that kind lady, her mother in
all the essentials of maternal love, been so near the end of her days, and
so dependent on her niece's affection, the girl would have clung about her
father's neck, and implored him to go no more a-soldiering, and to make
himself a home with her in England.
CHAPTER IV.
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.
The reverend mother lingered till the beginning of summer, and it was on
a lovely June evening, while the nightingales were singing in the convent
garden, that the holy life slipped away into the Great Unknown. She died as
a child falls asleep, the saintly grey head lying peacefully on Angela's
supporting arm, the last look of the dying eyes resting on that tender
nurse with infinite love.
She was gone, and Angela felt strangely alone. Her contemporaries, the
chosen friend who had been to her almost as a sister, the girls by whose
side she had sat in class, had all left the convent. At twenty-one years of
age, she seemed to belong to a former generation; most of the pupils had
finished their education at seventeen or eighteen, and had returned to
their homes in Flanders, France, or England. There had been several English
pupils, for Louvain and Douai had for a century been the seminaries for
English Romanists.
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