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Updated: June 2, 2025
"Stuff! she must be sub-prioress, and there was an end of it, or the abbess might lie groaning there till she was as stiff as a pole." "Alas! Sidonia," answered the abbess, "I would rather lie here as stiff as a pole or, in other words, lie here a corpse, for I understand thy meaning than do aught that was unjust." Illa. "What was unjust?
Mary Mark very properly refused to allow the old" "Lay-sister," interposed the Bishop, sternly. Mother Sub-Prioress gasped; then made obeisance: "the old lay-sister to leave the Convent. Whereupon Sister Antony sent Mary Mark to deliver the Reverend Mother's message to me, bribing her, with the promise of a gift from you, my lord, to leave her the key.
"You will not walk," replied the Prioress, sternly. "You will travel upon your hands and knees." She crossed to the door, unlocked and set it wide. "Moreover," she added, from the doorway, "if you do not appear in my presence in reasonable time, I shall be constrained to send for Mother Sub-Prioress."
In speaking of the late Prioress, the Prior had said: "She ever seemed as one apart, who walked among the stars; yet full, to overflowing, of the milk of human kindness and the gracious balm of sympathy." He had then asked Mother Sub-Prioress if she felt able to follow in her steps. To which Mother Sub-Prioress, vexed at the question, had answered, tartly: Nay; that she knew no Milky Way!
She was younger than the prioress or even the sub-prioress. And she had that attractive youthfulness of manner which often survives in the cloister after middle age. "Here is Miss Innes," said the prioress; "I know you wished to make her acquaintance." "Yes, indeed."
She had prayed, by name, for each member of the Community; and as she prayed, a gift of love for each had been granted to her. Ah, would they make discovery, before the morrow, that instead of the brier had come up the myrtle tree? With this hope filling her heart, Mother Sub-Prioress hastened along the passage, and rang the Convent bell.
"Not within her cell!" exclaimed Mother Sub-Prioress. "Not within her cell!" shrieked a score of terrified voices, like seagulls calling to each other, before a gathering storm. "The Prioress left the Convent yesterday afternoon," said the Bishop, "with my knowledge and approval; travelling at once, with a sufficient escort, to a place some distance from Worcester, where I also spent the night.
This cleared a view for Mother Sub-Prioress straight down the passage and through the big open door, to the cloisters; when, looking up to scold Mary Rebecca for taking such a leap, to bid Sister Teresa cease writhing, and Mary Seraphine to shriek in her cell with the door shut, if shriek she must Mother Sub-Prioress saw the Bishop, alone and unattended, walking toward them from the cloisters.
But Sister Seraphine was better content than she had been for many weeks. At last she had become the centre of attention; and, although, during the visit of Mother Sub-Prioress to her cell, this had been a peculiarly painful position to occupy, yet to the morbid mind of Mary Seraphine, the position seemed worth the discomfort.
Yet now, in this strangely softened mood, she began wistfully to desire that there might be looks of pleasure and satisfaction on at least a few faces, when the announcement should be made on the morrow. Mother Sub-Prioress passed into the cell, and closed the door. She was drawn, by the glow of the sunset, to the oriel window.
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