NUN’S LOVE ROMANCE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2553, 10 March 1923, Page 1

NUN’S LOVE ROMANCE.

REVOCATION OF VOWS. RETURNS ON HUSBAND’S DEATH. Swept from a convent’s seclusion after 25 years on a tide of suddenly reawakened love, a former nun named Sister Antonella has now, some six years later, returned as a widow, to the haven of the Church. Sister Antonella, before she donned for the first time the sombre robes of the nuns of the Order of St. Francis was Miss Paula Schillinger, a society belle, daughter of a merchant of Syracuse, New York. George Hessler won her heart and they became engaged, but he was not. a Roman Catholic, and all her pleadings to induce him to change his faith were futile.

Finally, at the urging of her spiritual advisers, and, it is understood, of her family, she made it a condition of their marriage. He was still obdurate, so, breaking off her engagement, she became a nun. She was eighteen years old at the time. DRAMATIC MEETING.

George Hessler went his way, and amassed a large fortune as a manufacturer in the city of Utica, but he never married. It chanced that Sister Antonella, 25 years later, quite ignorant of what had become of her former fiance, was sent with another nun on a mission to Utica. As she emerged from the railway station a tall, grave looking man of middle age descended from his mo-tor-car to catch a train.

Doubtless attracted by the women’s garb his ga/.e rested upon Sister Antonella. Instantly he recognised his former sweetheart, and startled, he stopped abruptly. At the same, moment the nun realised who he was and also stopped, overcome by emotion. She would have fallen had not the other sister caught her in her arms. “Paula, at last I have found you,” she heard Mr Hessler say, “1 will never leave you again.” FIVE YEARS OF HAPPINESS.

The upshot of this meeting was that her vows were revoked by the bishop of the diocese, and she became Mrs Hessler. Her husband had accumulated all the wealth he wanted, and he lavished it upon his bride. They entertained extensively and travelled much, and, for live years, extracted from life all that it held of great jov for them. Then a year ago death claimed Mr Hessler, and his widow, crushed and inconsolable, decided to retire again from the world, this time for ever.

It took a long time for the preparation that had to he gone through, but Mrs Hessler, taking with her the fortune bequeathed by her husband, has now joined the Dominican Nuns, as the inmate of a convent near Cleveland, Ohio,