Her face might have been carved out of white ice, but her eyes glowed like coals and her words came low, quick, and clear, and wonderfully to the point.

As a girl, her temper had been terrific, and had estranged her from her own family; but her unconquerable will had forged it into a weapon that never failed her in a just cause and was never drawn in an unjust one.

Monsignor Saracinesca sometimes thought that Saint Paul must have had the same kind of fiery and fearless temperament.
It sometimes outran facts, if it always obeyed her intention, as happened one day when she privately gave Angela a sermon on vanity which would have made the other novices tremble at the time and feel very uncomfortable for several days afterwards.

When she had wound up her peroration and finished, she drew two or three fierce little breaths and scrutinised the young girl's face; but to her surprise it had not changed in the least.

The clear young eyes were as steady and quiet as ever; if they expressed anything, it was a quiet admiration which the older woman had not hitherto roused in the younger members of her community.
'Pray for me, Mother,' Angela said, 'and I will try to be less vain.' The other looked at her again very keenly, and then, instead of answering, asked a question.
'Why do you wish to be a nun ?' Angela had lately asked herself the same thing, but she replied with some diffidence: 'If I can do a little good, by working very hard all my life, I hope that it may be allowed to help the soul of a person who died suddenly.' The Mother Superior's white face softened a little.
'That is a good intention,' she said.