e, youthful figure contracted and bent like that of
a woman withered by some wasting sickness, her dainty garments seemed to
lose their colouring and their freshness, and hang on her, by some strange
illusion wrought by the working of her mind upon his, like sordid rags.
Against the splendid riot of life and colour over and under and about her,
she looked like some slender sapling ringed and blighted, and ruined by
the inexorable worm. For she was remembering the tavern on the veld. She
was recalling what had been--realising what must henceforth be, in its
fullest meaning. She shuddered, and her half-open mouth drew in the air
in gasps, and the blankness of her stare appalled him. He called in alarm:

"Lynette dearest! what is the matter? Why do you look at me like that?
Lynette!"

She did not answer. She shook like a leaf in the wind, and stared through
him and beyond him into the Past. That was all. There was a rustling of
leaves and branches higher on the bank, and the sound of thick woollen
draperies trailing through grass. The bush on the edge of the cleared
space that was about the great boulder was parted by a white, strong hand
and a black-sleeved arm, and the Mother-Superior moved out into the open,
and came down with those long, swift steps of hers to where they were. Her
eyes, sweeping past Beauvayse, fastened on the drooping, stricken figure
of the girl, read the altered face, and then she turned them on the boy,
and they were stern as those of some avenging Angel, and her white wimple,
laundried to snowy immaculateness by the capable hands of Sister Tobias,
framed a face as white.

"What is the reason of--this? What has passed between you to account for
it? Has your mother's son no sense of honour, sir?"

The icy tone of contempt stung him to risk the leap. He drew himself to
his splendid height, and answered, his brave young eyes boldly meeting the
stern eyes that questioned him:

"Ma'am, I am sorry that you should think me capable of dishonourable
conduct. The fact is, that I have just asked Miss Mildare to be my wife.
And she consents."

A spasm passed over the pale face. So easily they leave us whom we have
reared and tended, when the strange hand beckons and the new voice calls.
But the Mother-Superior was not a woman to betray emotion. She drew her
black nun's robe over the pierced mother-heart, and said calmly, holding
out her hand to him:

"You will forgive me if I was unjust, knowing that sh