h it for
good."

"You are so dreadfully changed and so awfully composed, and I always was
sensitive. And, besides, to find you like this when I expected you to beat
your head upon the floor--or was it against the wall, they said?--and pray
to be put out of your misery by poison, or revolver, or knife, as though
anybody would be wicked enough to do it ..."

A faint stain of colour crept into Lady Bridget-Mary's white cheeks.

"All that is over, Aunt Constantia. Forget it, as I have done, and drink a
little of this. The Sisters believe it to be calming to the nerves."

"To naturally calm nerves, I suppose." The Dowager accepted the tumbler.
"What a nice, thick, old-fashioned glass!" She sipped. "You hear how my
teeth are chattering against the rim. That is because I have flown here in
such a hurry of agitation upon hearing from your father that you have
decided to enter the Novitiate at once."

"It is true," said Lady Bridget-Mary, standing very tall and dark and
straight against the background of the parlour window, that was filled in
with ground-glass, and veiled with snowy curtains of starched
thread-lace.

"True! When not ten months ago you declared to me that you would not be a
nun for all the world.... You begged me to befriend you in the matter of
Captain Mildare. I undertook, alas! that office...."

The Dowager-Duchess blew her nose.

"A little more of the orange-flower water, dear aunt?"

"'Dear aunt,' when you are trampling upon my very heart-strings! And let
me tell you, Bridget-Mary, you have always been my favourite niece. '_For
all the world,_' you said with your own lips, '_I would not be a nun!_'
Three millions will buy, if not the world, at least a good slice of it....
Figuratively, I offer them to you in this outstretched hand!" The Dowager
extended a puce kid glove. "The husband who goes with them is a good
creature. I have seen and spoken with him, and the dear Queen regards me
as a judge of men. 'Consie,' she has said, 'you have perception....' What
my Sovereign credits may not my niece believe?"

Lady Bridget-Mary's black brows were stern over the great joyless eyes
that looked out of their sculptured caves upon the world she had bidden
good-bye to. But the fine lines of humour about the wings of the sensitive
nostrils and the corners of the large finely-modelled mouth quivered a
little.

"Drink a little more orange-flower water, dear, and never tell me who the
man is. I do not wish to h