History! what events deserving that name
could have troubled the smooth waters of her life?
I was silent, for I was disturbed; but Julia did not notice either my
embarrassment or my silence, and began, in her low, soft voice, to
open one of the saddest chapters of life which I had ever heard.
'You do not know that I am going into a convent?' she said; then,
without waiting for an answer, she continued: 'This is the last month
of my worldly life. In four weeks, I shall have put on the white robe
of the novitiate, and in due course I trust to be dead for ever to
this earthly life.'
A heavy, thick, choking sensation in my throat, and a burning pain
within my eyeballs, warned me to keep silence. My voice would have
betrayed me.
'When I was seventeen,' continued Julia, 'I was engaged to my cousin.
We had been brought up together from childhood, and we loved each
other perfectly. You must not think, because I speak so calmly now,
that I have not suffered in the past. It is only by the grace of
resignation and of religion, that I have been brought to my present
condition of spiritual peace. I am now five-and-twenty--next week I
shall be six-and-twenty: that is just nine years since I was first
engaged to Laurence. He was not rich enough, and indeed he was far too
young, to marry, for he was only a year older than myself; and if he
had had the largest possible amount of income, we could certainly not
have married for three years.
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