title would have estranged for
ever. He had buttonholed the Chief, and was gassing away--joy!--upon the
very subject.

"I fancy the ladies of the Convent, who occasionally visit the Hospital,
were coming in at this gate. The short nun, I noticed, had a little
basket in her hand. Probably they went round to the side entrance, seeing
the--ha, ha!--the stoep garrisoned by Her Majesty's Imperial Forces.
Certainly.... Without doubt. We respect the Mother-Superior highly. A most
gifted, most estimable person in every way, if rather stern and
reserved.... Unapproachable, my wife calls her. But Miss Mildare, her
ward----"

XXIV

"Miss Mildare!"

The Chief's keen eyes had lightened suddenly. The whole face had darkened
and narrowed, and the clipped brown moustache lost its smiling curve, and
straightened into a hard line.

"Miss _Mildare_?"

"Why, yes, that is her name.... An orphan, I have heard, and with no
living relatives. But she seems happy enough at the Convent, judging by
what Mrs. Greening says."

The hearer experienced a momentary feeling of relief and of anger--relief
to think that dead Dick Mildare's daughter should have found refuge in
such a woman's heart; anger that the woman should have concealed from him
the girl's identity, knowing her the object of his own anxious search.

Then he understood. His anger died as suddenly as it had been kindled. He
recalled something that he had seen when the rearing horse had inclined
perilously towards the footway--that protecting maternal gesture, that
swift interposition of the tall, active, black-robed figure between the
white-clad, flower-faced, girlish creature and those threatening iron-shod
hoofs....

"She loves the girl--Dick Mildare's daughter by the treacherous friend who
stole him from her. Is there a doubt? With poor little Lady Lucy Hawting's
willowy figure and the same nymph-like droop of the little head, with its
rich twists and coils of dead-leaf-coloured hair, shaded by the big black
hat. That woman has taken her to her heart, however she came by her; the
parting would be agony, stern, proud, tender creature that she is! I
suppose she will be doing thundering penance for not having told me, a
fellow who simply walked into the place and assegaied her with my
death-news. Here's a marrowy bone of gossip Lady Hannah shall never crack.
And yet I wouldn't swear there's not an angel husked inside that dried-up
little chrysalis. For God made all wo