“Who will have the strength to turn the convent into an active Order when I am gone?” the Prioress often asked Evelyn, who could only answer her that she hoped she would be with them for many a day yet. “No, my dear, not for many months. I am a very old woman.” She questioned Evelyn regarding Mother Philippa’s administration; and Evelyn disguised from her the disorder that had come into the convent, not telling how the nuns spent a great deal of time visiting each other in their cells, how in the garden some walked on one side and some on the other, how the bitterest enmities had sprung up. But, though she was not told these things, the Prioress knew her convent had fallen into decadence, and sometimes she said:
“Well, I haven’t the strength to restore dignity to this Order; so it had bet
