The convent was neither very large nor very wealthy. The
building itself had formerly been a chateau-farm, which, with
its sheds and outlying buildings, had, many years ago, been
converted with considerable alterations into its present form;
rooms had been partitioned off, a little chapel had been
built, the hall turned into a refectory, the farmyard and
orchard into a pleasant sunny garden with lawn, and flower-
beds, and shrubs, with vines and fruit-trees alternating with
creepers along the old walls. As for the sisters, few were
from the upper ranks of society, belonging for the most part,
rather to the middle and bourgeois class. Mademoiselle Linders
had gained her present position not less by her superior birth
and education, than by that to which she would more willingly
have attributed her elevation--a certain asceticism of life
which she affected, an extra observance of fasts and vigils,
which the good nuns looked upon with reverence, without caring
to emulate such peculiar sanctity in their own persons. The
rule was not a strict one, nor, though the Superior was
careful to enforce it to its utmost rigour, was the life one
of particular hardship or privation.
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