Alma was an American. Her father was very rich and his home was in New
York. But her mother lived in Paris, though she was staying at an hotel
in Rome at present, and sometimes she came in a carriage to take her
daughter for a drive.
Alma was the cleverest girl in the school too, and sometimes at the end
of terms, when parents and friends came to the Convent and one of the
Cardinals distributed the prizes, she had so many books to take away
that she could hardly carry them down from the platform.
I listened to this with admiring awe, thinking Alma the most wonderful
and worshipful of all creatures, and when I remember it now, after all
these years, and the bitter experiences which have come with them, I
hardly know whether to laugh or cry at the thought that such was the
impression she first made on me.
My class was with the youngest of the children, and Sister Angela was my
teacher. She was so sweet to me that her encouragement was like a kiss
and her reproof like a caress; but I could think of nothing but Alma,
and at noon, when the bell rang for lunch and Mildred took me back to
the Refectory, I wondered if the same girl would read again.
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