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Updated: June 29, 2025
You have been thwarted in your evil purpose by the faithfulness of one old woman, our aged lay-sister, Mary Antony, who never fails to count the White Ladies as they go and as they return, and who reported at once to me that one more had returned than went. "Do you not see in this the Hand of God?
I was obliged to talk to all the nuns, and Madame Morin told her niece that I wanted her to try some excellent chocolate I had brought from Genoa, but that I hoped her lay-sister would make it. "Sir," said M M , "kindly send me the chocolate, and to-morrow we will breakfast together with these dear sisters."
We agreed that she should receive the young lady in her convent, and give her a good lay-sister to nurse her through her confinement. Now you will not deny," said she, with a smile, "that the cloisters are of some use. Your young friend must go by herself to the convent with a letter for the abbess, which I will give her, and which she must deliver to the porter.
"I may say the same. If, when I summon M. M. to the parlour, the lay-sister tells us she is ill or busy, we will go, and the wager will be yours; you will sup with the fair, and I will go elsewhere." "So be it; but since all this will be at nighttime, it is possible that when you ask for her, the sister will tell you that no one can be seen at such an hour." "Then I shall lose."
The Prioress paused, a look of great gladness on her face; then, as she saw the old lay-sister still eyeing her posy with dissatisfaction: "And, after all, dear Antony," she said, "who shall decide which flowers shall be dubbed 'weeds'? No plant of His creation, however humble, was called a 'weed' by the Creator.
As the roar which followed rolled away, echoed and re-echoed by distant hills, the old lay-sister lifted her face. Her lips moved, her gums rattled; the terror in her eyes pleaded for help. This was the moment when it dawned on the Prioress that there was more here than fear of a storm. Stooping she laid her hands firmly, yet with kindness in their strength, on the shaking shoulders.
"Ah, Reverend Mother," sighed the old lay-sister, "in this did I again do wrong meaning to do right. Sister Mary Augustine, coming into the kitchens with leave, from Mother Sub-Prioress, to make the pasties, and desiring to be free to make them heavy unhampered by my advice which, of a surety, would have helped them to lightness bade me go out and weed the garden.
He knocked, and a lay-sister peeped through the grating, and then she opened the door a little way, and at first he thought he would have to go back without seeing either Catherine or the Reverend Mother. For he had got no further than "Sister Catherine," when the lay-sister cut him short with the news that Sister Catherine was in retreat, and could see no one. The Reverend Mother was busy.
The Holy Virgin heard my prayers, for my pains, though sharp, were soon over, and a quarter of an hour after my delivery I was still sneezing. Tell me whether you are a man or an angel, for I fear lest I sin in adoring you." "This is good news indeed. And how about the lay-sister?" "She still breathes, but we have no hope that she will recover. Her face is terribly distorted.
She began at the beginning, and told him all, to the minutest detail; the full description of Hugh the amazingly correct repetition, in the vision, of the way in which she and Hugh had actually kneeled together before the shrine of the blessèd Virgin, of their very words and actions; and, finally, the sublime and gracious tenderness of our Lady's pronouncement, clearly heard at the close of the vision, by the old lay-sister: "Take her; she hath been ever thine.
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