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The bell tolled twice, stopped, and tolled four; the smaller bells echoed. The voices of the sentries came to their ears, loudly at first, then more distant, then reduced to the merest spider-thread of sound: "'Ware big gun! South quarter, 'ware!" "I must go to her," the Mother-Superior said, and passed him swiftly and went down the ladder. Saxham followed.
On Sundays, when the birds returned from the hills, to which they had been scared by the hideous tumult of War, thither after High Mass in the battered little Roman Catholic church in the stad, the Mother-Superior and the Sisters would come, bringing with them such poor food as they had, and picnic soberly.
"Stop!" exclaimed the mother-superior, suddenly raising her hand. "You do not mean to intimate that she is the girl whom you overheard talking with the young Duke of Hereward at midnight, under your balcony, on the night before the murder of Sir Lemuel Levison?"
It was a beautiful, bright morning near the end of June, and the day in regular rotation on which the mother-superior of the convent made her official rounds of inspection in the Infants' Asylum.
"I will follow your counsels in everything, holy mother," answered Salome, sweetly, as she arose and put her hand on the offered arm of her friend. The abbess led her protegee down a long passage and deep flights of stairs to the refectory, where, at each side of a very long table, running down the length of the room, stood about fifty nuns waiting for their mother-superior.
And I myself will come and see you at the grating as often as you please." It was then my sad duty, which the laws of politeness enjoined, to thank the marquis for his trouble. "'Tis to you, my lord," said I, "I entrust Rosalie. I am placing her, I am sure, in good hands. I will go on my way as soon as she is in the convent; I hope you will write a letter to the mother-superior for her to take."
Then she went, moving with the long, smooth, light step and upright, graceful carriage that she had somehow caught from the Mother-Superior, out of the room.
His hot eagerness frightened her. Her downcast eyelids quivered, and her flushed maiden-face shrank from him. "Oh, don't be angry! Don't move away!" Beauvayse entreated; for Lynette's anxious glance had gone in search of the Mother-Superior, with whom Saxham was now discussing the nuns' idea of utilising the Convent as a Convalescent Hospital.
Two shillings was charged per head, and I must say people got their money's worth, for appetites seem keen in these parts. The mother-superior, a kindly old woman, evidently belonging to the working class, bustled about and shook hands with each of her guests.
"We have pleasure in announcing the approaching marriage of Lieutenant the Right Hon. Viscount Beauvayse, Grey Hussars, Junior Aide to the Colonel Commanding H.M. Forces, Gueldersdorp, to Miss Lynette Bridget-Mary Mildare, ward of the Mother-Superior, Convent of the Holy Way, North Veld Road."
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