When Herbert asked to what part of England they should go, on
leaving London, she mentioned Sandyseal as a place that she had
heard of, and felt some curiosity to see. The same day--bent on
pleasing her, careless where he lived now, at home or abroad--he
wrote to engage rooms at the hotel.

A time followed, during which they were obliged to wait until
rooms were free. In this interval, brooding over the melancholy
absence of a friend or relative in whom she could confide, her
morbid dread of the future decided her on completing the parallel
between herself and that other lost creature of whom she had
read. Sydney opened communication anonymously with the
Benedictine community at Sandyseal.

She addressed the Mother Superior; telling the truth about
herself with but one concealment, the concealment of names. She
revealed her isolated position among her fellow-creatures; she
declared her fervent desire to repent of her wickedness, and to
lead a religious life; she acknowledged her misfortune in having
been brought up by persons careless of religion, and she
confessed to having attended a Protestant place of worship, as a
mere matter of form connected with the duties of a teacher at a
school. "The religion of any Christian woman who will help me to
be more like herself," she wrote, "is the religion to which I am
willing and eager to belong. If I come to you in my distress,
will you receive me?" To that simple appeal, she added a request
that an answer might be addressed to "S.W., Post-office,
Sandyseal."

When Captain Bennydeck and Sydney Westerfield passed each other